WAT'S ON our minds?

Nice comments about Hyrum

2011-06-19T16:40:00.000-04:00

(reposted)
I mentioned Prince's poster with statements from his classmates about him. I'll post a picture of it on our old blog (for those who know where that is), but the comments are here:

T -- Prince loves to play with me outside.
Kt -- Prince likes to play in block corner and ride bikes.
Ay -- Prince likes to play with me outside.
D -- Prince likes to play in the block corner.
B -- Prince likes to sing songs at circle time.
Ax -- Prince likes letters.
Ki -- Prince likes boats.
I -- Prince likes outside time.
Z -- Prince is learning to use the pedals on a bike
J -- Prince likes to play with trains.
P -- Prince is my friend.

Is there anything you would like to say about your friends, Prince?

"A____y took a deep breath!" We are grateful that A_____y took a deep breath, Joy adds. She helped teach Prince how to take deep breaths to calm down.

His note to T____ was also sweet: "I like to sit next to T_____" T was his bus buddy, at least when they weren't hitting, pushing, and kicking each other as boys are wont to do.

Decisions Made, Directions Given

2011-06-10T07:30:00.000-04:00

OUR BLOGGING EFFORTS ARE MOVING to joymeta.blogspot.com. (links on the right)

So we were there planning to go to Nigeria and really wishing there were more blogs from Nigeria that would help new couples like us get a feel for the place and what it's like to raise a family. Joy announced that she wanted to set up a public blog (unlike this half-public, half-hidden blog) where she would talk about Nigerian life.

I was pretty excited. I'm always very happy when I can get Joy to post over here, in part because then this becomes much more of a family blog and less a Derrill production; in part because she talks about things I don't think to that I want to remember and save; in part because none of our female friends are willing to comment on my posts, but you will say something to Joy, so if I want to hear from you, I've got to get Joy to say something; in part as validation of the time I spend on this family journal; in part because I enjoy every time I get my 19th century wife to use a technological device; and a few more parts for good measure.

What I didn't realize was that she only wanted to post at the new blog. I figured we'd talk about "Africa stuff" in the other blog and Hyrum stuff in this blog. Silly man, trying to keep your life separated into boxes like that! The point is to tell people what it's like having kids in Nigeria. How do you separate them?

Hm, good point, dear. I know, I'll double-post anything of particular family interest and ... no. You're right. It's easier to just pretend we have two blogs and leave it at that.

So until further notice, this blog is going on hiatus. We may return to it when we come back to the States. We'll see. Until then, update your RSS feeders and bookmarks to Tender Mercies Realized.

Fifth Fundamental Force

2011-06-07T08:04:00.000-04:00

Physics believes in four fundamental forces: gravity, elctromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. I have discovered another force. It is particularly fundamental because it does not operate the same as the other forces, nor obey standard Newtonian physics.

The 5th Fundamental Force is Pregnancy. The actions of the pregnant body are so vastly different from those of a body in standard physics environments, that the differences bear enumeration.

Amendments to Newtonian Laws:

1) A body at rest cannot remain at rest because the baby will start kicking something and it will hurt.

2) Pregnancy increases entropy. Things fall apart faster.

3) For every action of the husband, there is an opposite, disproportionately large reaction.

These changes are significant enough that we can determine with certainty that Isaac Newton was never pregnant.

Interactions with other forces:

Gravity is the curvature of spacetime around an object of mass. This draws other objects in towards the object of mass. This holds true for the pregnant force as so many people find their hands inexplicably drawn toward rubbing the tummy of the pregnant object.

High school students who believe Ben Franklin invented electricity might also be interested to learn about his extensive experiments in the field of pregnancy: "A ship under sail and a big-bellied woman,
are the handsomest two things that can be seen common."

Further experiments are underway to demonstrate how the weak and strong forces interact with pregnancy. Researchers insist they simply haven't collected enough hCG to come up with a positive test result.

Preparing for Lavinia

2011-06-05T21:18:00.000-04:00

My visiting teachers had a baby shower for me this week and it has helped me to finally start earnest preparations for Lavinia to come (rather than just preparations to take her to Nigeria). I started going through Hyrum's old clothing and organized the clothing that I have for her. I will be washing it this week and packing some of it to go to the hospital.

The shower was so nice, a couple of games and some wonderful friends that I haven't spent much time with lately. I want to thank everyone that came, it was a enjoyable evening and I am glad that it helped me to feel the event coming was more real. :)

--Joy

Tender Mercies Realized

2011-06-05T21:13:00.000-04:00

Our official Nigeria blog is now up and running. We will be living in either Yola or Jimeta, so the blog address is JOYmeta.blogspot.com. There is also a link on the right. She has promised to take an active updating role in this one. It is possible that that will eventually become the new and official family blog. We'll see. We'll let you know before we abandon this one.

Hyrum's Top Ten: May 11

2011-06-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

Hyrum's top ten this month is amazingly easy:

BACKYARDIGANS

Between birthday and potty prizes, Hyrum has been stocking up on new music and loving it. Every day to school, the only music he wanted to listen to was his new Backyardigans music, and the only music of that he wanted was the soundtrack to the Mighty Knights episode. It's rock opera. ... Yeah. So we've been listening to a lot of rock opera lately. I can't say it's growing on me. It's the only set of his songs I refuse to listen to more than once a day. If he wanted his other Backyardigans songs, that would be no problem.

1 - Backyardigans Theme Song - 27
   We're Knights, That's Right
3 - A Challenge - 26
4 - Mario Theme song - 25    (not Backyardigans)
5 - Grabbing Goblin - 24
     Tweedily Dee
     Dragon Mountain
     Not an Egg
9 - A Pirate Says Arrrr - 19
10 - Prince of Egypt, horse race - 17 (not Backyardigans)

Hy happened to win a potty prize the day he discovered Prince of Egypt and he asked me for the music as Moses and Ramses are racing horses. It's not on the PoE soundtrack and it's not anywhere on the internet. Most of the music isn't on the net. We have the Tabernacle Choir singing Through Heaven's Eyes and a couple versions of When You Believe, but good luck trying to find anything else, on the soundtrack or not. I was not going to be able to find it anywhere.

Then we went to pray. Hy has been having a hard time praying lately, particularly in trying to come up with things to pray about. But he did come up with one request: Please bless Daddy to find the horses song.

So ... I hooked up my microphone to the computer speakers and recorded the two minutes to a track for him. The next morning, I had one happy boy.

LDS in Nigeria 1: 1960-1980

2011-06-05T12:32:00.001-04:00

From News of the Church, Feb1980, "A Miracle Precedes the Messengers," Janet Brigham.

African Christians in Ghana (green) and Nigeria (orange) had been writing to the church since at least 1960, asking for more information, for "holy books," and for any opportunity to learn more about the Church. While I was in Nigeria, my hosts noted that the two most popular types of book that you can find everywhere and anywhere are religion and self-help (aka get rich). Visa problems kept the Church from sending representatives until August, and then Nov 1978. Within 14 months, there were 1700 converts.

And the friendliness of the people in Ghana and Nigeria compensates for other difficulties. The couples reported to President Spencer W. Kimball: “We have never been anywhere in the world where it is so easy to engage a stranger in gospel discussion—opportunities [are] at every hand. One need not go from door-to-door—just have your tracts ready. Even busy people walking on the street will stop and talk. Workmen on construction jobs carry the tracts in hand for long periods of time. If you go by an hour or so later, it isn’t unusual to see them reading” (see Ensign, May 1979, p. 106).

The first missionary couples found a people who had been heavily prepared in many ways to receive the gospel:

Africans learned of the Church from other Africans who had studied in the United States. They came across some missionary pamphlets. No one now knows how those pamphlets got to Africa in the 1950s—but the effect was remarkable. Many who read them recognized the truth. Then—independent of each other and without knowledge of the other’s actions—several groups of blacks in both Nigeria and Ghana started their own religious organizations, patterned after the Church. However, visa problems prevented representatives being sent to officially establish the Church.

The groups built small meeting-houses and met regularly. They copied organization, doctrines, songs, and titles after the Church, as much as they were able to discern from the literature they received. Occasionally they had contact with members of the Church visiting Africa.

The Africans even proselyted. One man, after a stirring spiritual experience, “was constrained by [the] Spirit to go from street to street … to deliver the message which we had read from the Book of Mormon and from the pamphlets.” Despite some “persecutions” and sometimes being labeled as an “anti-Christ organization,” the “missionaries” were undaunted.

“We persisted with the word and won forty people that day even to the admiration of the Muslims around,” one man reports.

Among the many letters sent to Church headquarters asking for more light and knowledge was this on

"We here are the true sons of God, but colour makes no difference in the service of Our Heavenly Father and Christ. The Spirit of God calls us to abide by this church and there is nothing to keep us out.”

The author of that letter, Anthony Obinna, was later to become the first black western African baptized and called as branch president.
But before this happened, difficulties with visas had to be resolved. And the Biafra war made the situation more complex.

In August 1978, Elder Cannon and Merrill Bateman of the Brigham Young University faculty were sent by the Church on a factfinding tour of the groups in Nigeria and Ghana.... [Elder Mabey said] “We said we realized the world was full of all colors of people, all kinds of backgrounds, and we didn’t think of ourselves as white men among them. We said that we’re all children of God who are loved by our Heavenly Father.”

In a number of cases, these groups had organized themselves and told the state they were the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By the time the missionaries arrived and actually baptized them, the buildings were over-filled.

Sister Cannon explains how, in good faith, these people tried to adopt the Church before the representatives came:

“What these congregations did was use the name of the Church. Most of them knew something about Church doctrine, but they didn’t know Church practices. So they just transferred the traditional Protestant pentecostal type of service to what they were doing in the Church.

“They had collection plates, a lot of pentecostal hallelujahs, singing, dancing, and drums. It was, of course, very satisfying to them. And for us to just go in and say, ‘You can’t do this,’ wasn’t enough. We had to tell them what they can do and what Church services are like. And that takes time. They not only have to learn new things, they have to unlearn a lot of old things.”

Though many such practices are not common in Church services, Elder Cannon explains, “Many of them are not against the doctrines of the Church. For instance, one practice they have is that as you’re speaking to them and you say something they particularly agree with, they’ll come right out with ‘Amen!’” ...

Once, following little more than a hunch, the representatives took a taxicab to a village nineteen miles from the Nigerian town of Owerri [southeast, near the current temple], in search of a man whom they had heard was interested in the Church. Following directions from a native, they drove directly to “a little building with a sign across the front: ‘L.D.S. Nigerian Mission.’” Elder Cannon says, “We knew we had arrived.” The founders of that “mission” were later baptized into the Church. ...

Believable Fallibility

2011-06-04T16:25:00.000-04:00

When I read Joy my post about Brandon Mull's characters being believably fallible, she called to mind our least favorite book recently: Inkheart. We were both highly disappointed. The characters are unbelievably stupid. If there is a wrong decision they could make, they make it. Good guy, bad guy, indifferent; no one thinks ahead, no one plans, no one exercises a modicum of self-preservation, no one shows the least bit of sense. And then the plot is resolved by doing something we were told 15 times couldn't be done. Boo.

"And not only do they make bad decisions, they make them again and again. They don't learn from their mistakes. It's not even lack of character development, it's lack of ability to learn. It's ridiculous."

And that's our unsolicited opinion.

Mario Party is bringing back my sanity

2011-06-03T19:40:00.000-04:00

Dealing with 3 year old demands, his no to many things, and general resistance to discipline have really sent me packing. I have been searching for something to get his attention and persuade him to be kind, stop yelling and stopping hitting an kicking things. When discipline lasts for more than 3/4ths of the day you know something has definitely broken down. I don't like discipline and definitely not the kind that makes us all grumpy all day long.

So...... how to help Hyrum stay out of timeout. My first attempt at making Mario Party DS (his new birthday game) the prize for no timeouts failed miserably. There were not enough chances for success. This failed attempt went as follows. Mommy says, "Hyrum if you do not get anymore timeouts until _____ time of day then you can play some Mario Party DS." Hyrum was really excited and really wanted to play, so it was not the motivation that failed. It was the fact that he only had one chance to succeed. Within 15 minutes he was in timeout and had lost the opportunity to play the DS and was even more miserable about loosing the prize than being in timeout. But mommy doesn't lie, so there was no going back on the deal, and all the build up of the deal had deflated in 15 minutes, no more chance no more motivation.

I thought and prayed about it some more feeling that there had to be another way. I came up with a DS chart with 5 spaces for Xs. We drew a picture of the DS and I explained that every time he earned an X he would be closer to getting time on the DS with mommy. He has a chance every hour to get an X. If he doesn't go to timeout once in a whole hour then he gets to draw the X (plan B would be to shorten the time for each X if we could not achieve success). It took a few explanations of what he needed to do and what he would get for him to begin to understand and get excited about it.

So, our first afternoon (yesterday), I felt like was a success. Hyrum earned two Xs which means we had two beautiful hours without timeouts and we were all happier too. I am perfectly willing to start the hour time all over after a timeout has happened, there just needs to be an hour before the next one. I remind him if he is starting to act up what will happen if he gets a timeout and it helps him remember often why he is going to choose to listen or be kind to me. Today he earned two more Xs, therefore with any luck he will earn the other one tomorrow and we will play the Mario Party DS game together for 10 minutes. Having some hours without timeouts has been so wonderful to me and sanity and the spirit are returning to our home. I am so grateful for Heavenly Father's help.

Written by Joy

What Pi Sounds Like

2011-06-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

This isn't what I did for the talent show last year, but it's so close I might as well claim I'm trying to become like this guy.

A Tale of Two Brandons: Mull

2011-06-03T08:55:00.002-04:00

Given how long it took me to finish writing the first blog post on Brandon Sanderson, I might as well start writing the second now too.

This blog first got started when Joy left for a couple months to take care of my grandmother, be pampered by my family in her first pregnancy, and give me more time to write my dissertation. During that time, I wandered the library at Cornell and picked up a book called Fablehaven. I was spellbound and couldn't sleep until I had devoured it whole. I introduced it to Joy as soon as I could. We bought each of the books in the series as soon as they came out, have mentioned our enjoyment of them together several times, and were sad to see them go. We also read the Candy Shop War together, which Joy didn't enjoy as much but was still good. I finished reading the first book in his new Beyonders series this week, which is what got me back to writing about the two Brandons again.

Brandon Mull clearly writes for a younger crowd than Sanderson. The stories are much less gritty, less dark, more moralistic (complete with family home evening discussion questions in the back to get your kids thinking about the right and wrong choices the characters made). Hence, I've been sharing Mull with Joy and not Sanderson.

Mull comes up with unique magical/mythical worlds with their own sets of coherent rules. His young characters generally act their age (unlike, say, *coughtwicoughlightcough*). The last 100 pages or so of each story is in the no-putting-down zone, and I already mentioned how much I loved the first Fablehaven book. His characters are believably fallible, which so many authors forget, and they do a fair share of flailing about trying to figure out what to do next. I got emotionally attached to some of the outcomes and went around for over a year hoping that I was right about a prediction. (I was! YES!!) All that, and I'm a sucker for time travel, which we get just a teeny bit. The primary villain is interesting and complex.

He doesn't manage to do much character development. There is some. In Fablehaven there are two main characters, and both grow in book 1, but only one of them grows in the rest of the series, which is a real pity. In fact, it was my main disappointment with book 5, realizing how little Kendra had grown and changed since discovering courage in book 1. Her brother who has to deal with choosing if, when, and how to break rules constantly gets all the cool toys, the cool adventures, (the plot-altering disasters), the comic-relief sidekicks (who are a scream), the big questions to ask, and gets to do things solo while Kendra is always protected by someone else because she never blossoms into the full sense of her powers. Never. :( She just radiates light. Pff. In what would be a spoiler if it weren't blatantly obvious in the last book (you are duly warned) her final romantic interest is a unicorn. Come on! Gag! At least we aren't seeing a whole new library section devoted to unicorn romance.

That said, his secondary characters are wonderful. I want to see spin-off series about several of them. Even if they don't grow, they are intriguing and I really wanted to learn more about each of them.
My only other complaint is that he relies a little too much on deus ex machina. There's nearly always one more character he can pull out of thin air (sometimes literally).

Joy asked me how I was enjoying Beyonders. It was alright, I'd say. Standard questing adventure. Lot of interesting, new things, lots of predictability ... it's alright. Then I finished it. I'm hooked. I can't wait for book 2. The ending was entirely unpredictable. If the next book continues strong, I'll tell Joy we ought to read them together also. (We take turns choosing the family book.)

A Tale of Two Brandons: Sanderson

2011-06-03T08:26:00.000-04:00

I intended to write these posts months ago but never got to them.

Our family's newest favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson and Brandon Mull. By favorite, we mean that we actually pre-order and sit around waiting for the next one to come out. So far, that's a set of three (the third being Ally Condie whose books we have already praised). Mull will get his own post later. This one is for Sanderson.

Sanderson is not the next Tolkein, or the next Rowling, or the next Hickman and Weis, or the next Brooks. He sets out in very different directions, creates unique worlds, and is not at all derivative. Hooray! (I worry when I read "the next ____," in case that makes things clearer.)

To me, his best quality is his ability to come up with new ways of introducing some form of magic. Elantris uses runes; the Mistborn series consumes metal; the Stormlight series absorbs light from ... you guessed it, storms; Alcatraz uses magical eyewear. Each world has its own source of power, different rules for what it lets you do, and very different, well-thought out characters making use of them. He gets in some wonderful commentary without being preachy or beating anyone over the head. There's religious strife in just about all his books, and he deals with it differently and wonderfully in every case. Other reviewers are amazed at his grasp of topics like leadership or government. Each book has been a delight.

Among his shortcomings that only I would care about are that his economics tends to be a little two-dimensional: nobility vs. slaves and peasants with a serious lack of interest in a middle-class. His next series may fix that. There's still only nobles and peasants, but at least there are gradations of nobility within each in an semi-economically-mobile caste system.

My only real complaint is that he is deciding more and more to have too many main characters. My brother points out that this makes him ideal to wrap up the Wheel of Time series, but I just don't care for it. You read 200-300 pages and wonder what has happened. Not much. We set the stage:

In his Mistborn trilogy, the first book has two main characters and we stick with mostly them. The pacing is excellent and it's a wonderful book. In book two we have three main characters and a few other people get chapters devoted to their point of view as well. In book three we have at least five main characters, all of them telling a unique story and it just gets bogged down.
In Warbreaker, there are three stories being told, but only one of them that matters. The second could have been done in 2-3 chapters and leave it at that. The third was extraordinarily interesting and could have been a separate spin-off book, but really never interacted with the main storyline until the absolute end, for about 5 seconds. In other words, we could have cut at least 500 pages from a 1000 page book. This was the only book of his I almost decided to not finish, mostly due to sexual situations just past the border of my comfort level. I would not watch the movie based on it.
In the new Stormlight series, there are four main characters, plus recurring minor characters, and you don't even see the same character twice in the first 100 pages! He tries to chop the book into 4 smaller books and lets you know ahead of time which of the main characters will be in that smaller book, but that means he finishes one of their stories way earlier than anyone else's and you're left hanging over the cliff for that character for more than 400 pages before he resolves it.

Now, his stories and his characters are worth the investment. Mistborn is coming to Nigeria with me (at the moment) to be reread. Even though I can barely put his books down, it's only after 200-300 pages into it that I poke my head up to wonder where the time has gone and what I've learned.

And then he has a totally different, tongue-in-cheek series about a 13 year old named Alcatraz Smedry where, among other things, he mocks himself. A delightful and funny series that you would never guess was written by the same author of the other delightful and thoughtful series (plural). It shows his great versatility. This is the only of his series that Joy and I have shared.

Here's looking forward to thousands of pages more.

The proof is in the publisher

2011-06-02T13:50:00.000-04:00

The final proof of my textbook is off to the publisher.Huzzah!

He has my eyes

2011-05-29T14:13:00.001-04:00

One of the things I like about Hyrum is that he has my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I would like it if he had Joy's eyes too. But since I have an easier time acknowledging my son's good looks than I do in thinking there is anything worthy of approval in my own looks, seeing my eyes reflecting from his handsome face gives me a little hope for me too.

Unfortunately, with the eyes comes the pink. I wouldn't say I regularly had pink eye as a child, but it was a frequent enough visitor that I know it when I see it. Hy is having his first bout with it, thankfully nowhere near as severe as what I had a few weeks ago. Little water, little discharge, little staying home from church, little glad there's no school tomorrow for him to miss, very little sleep as he pops into the bedroom several times a night to ask Mommy for help... good times. He's started asking for me to wash his eyes. We got a system going briefly that he liked, and when I did it differently the next time he said, "Daddy, you're not doing it right." I explained a bit further what it is we need to do, got him on board, and now we're working together much happier. I so have to keep trying to convince him to not stick his fingers in my eyes, though.

He also has a mild fever (100.6).

Meanwhile, I think I'm slowly passing another kidney stone, so it's time to be on Vicodin while moving boxes, mowing lawns, and trying to proof-read my textbook for the last time before publishing. For once, I was just as happy to spend church today lying down on the couch with him.

I've never been able to keep him laying down for as long as we just managed. We took turns watching half an hour of Prince of Egypt and Backyardigans. Each time we returned to PoE, he asked to start over and "see the horses going down." After the intro, teenage Moses and Ramses race each other in two-horse chariots. They nearly get themselves killed several times as people get out of the way, they jump gaps, and scaffolding crashes down around them. They pause the horses briefly at a barricade which suddenly collapses and they ride their horses down a tidal wave of sand in a scene highly reminiscent of going down a tall roller coaster. Pretty fun, but not the point, so I said no.

As we went along, I explained some of the parts of Moses' story from the Bible to be a bit more accurate than the film. He asked some pretty tough questions about why God sent curses and he correctly remembered and linked up the Passover with the Sacrament (score!). I was pretty pleased.

He told me several times that the movie was scary, but we made it through. It wasn't too scary, I guess. He and I had tried watching it last year, but it was too scary then. (I should note, he chose it from among the options I gave him.)

Afterwards, I asked him what was the scariest part. Imagine my surprise when he answered -- not the darkness, not the plagues, not the deaths, not the scary music -- "The horses. They go down WHOOSH. They go fast. Why did they go so fast, Daddy? Why did the horses go faster?"

I then asked him what his favorite part was. "The horses."

You liked the horses?
"Yes. They go fast."

I think I'm going to have a very interesting conversation with my Lovely and Gracious when she gets home....

----------------------

Hy-guy also apparently needs glasses. The school's best guess is that he has about 20/100 vision. We took him to an eye doctor for children in the area who demonstrated that he can read the top line of the eye chart, but nothing lower. We'll have to wait until the pink eye gets cleared up, though, to give him further testing to see just what kind of glasses. Happily, children who need glasses are a medical condition, while adults who need glasses need a separate vision insurance, so our insurance will cover his glasses if not mine.

Growing Up: Hyrum got Busted

2011-05-29T13:26:00.000-04:00

Oops, I think I misspelled the title. That should say, "Hyrum got bussed" and he couldn't be happier about it. In November as we met with the school board about Hy starting school, we had a discussion about whether he should ride the bus or if we would drive him to school. Joy wanted to drive him. She couldn't bear the thought of sending her little baby out on a bus. I was skeptical. "Dear, it's the winter," I said. "You know how much you don't want to drive in the snow. Some days, you are going to call me to walk home from work through the snow to get the car so I can drive him home. Is this really what you want to do?" She looked at me so plaintively that I knew she was sure. To Joy's credit, that scenario hasn't happened once, though I have occasionally driven him to school before work when the snow was bad. She drove Hy faithfully through the snow for months. Brave girl.

But now we're heading to Africa and Hyrum will be taking a shuttle to school (across the street from where I work). Joy is rather set against getting a car there. The reality of needing to put her boy on a bus out there led to a change of heart and she spoke with the school about getting him on a friendly bus here so they both can transition into it.

One week into the bussing, Hyrum loves it. He gets to sit next to his best friend, Tyler (when they aren't pushing and hitting each other) and he is happy and excited every day. The one thing he wants to report to us every day after school is whether or not Tyler said "Arrrr." The problem on our side is that the bus comes to our corner about 6:45, so we all need to wake up half an hour earlier to get him ready on time. We take turns getting him ready and then Joy greets him when he gets home. One day when I was working from home, though, I got to pick him up, which was a major surprise for him. Reward: one happy picture.
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A few weeks ago Hyrum got some belated birthday presents from one of his grandmothers (our fault). It's hard to tell which he is most excited about: the Backyardigan plush, the MarioParty game for DS to replace the Super Mario game we've been borrowing from my brother for months and will need to return soon, or the Toy Story action figures and play mat. I had left for Nigeria the day after Hyrum's gifts arrived, so he only had one chance to play his DS game before I spirited my toy away. While I was in Africa, the number one thing Hyrum talked about was me coming home and playing the DS game.

Despite that, it was pretty clear who the big winners were: the Backyardigans. Hyrum brought them into his room, set them out in his bed in order (above) and then took Mario, Luigi, and Peach out of his bed and set them on the dresser. We hadn't told him to. He just decided that he couldn't have both and he wanted his back yard friends. Instead of Mario and Luigi or Mario and Peach, Pablo and Tyrone accompanied him to school (until we switched to the bus, and okay, so one day he took Mario and Pablo).

Since then, we've convinced him he can have all of them together. So there are 10 in the bed until the little one says Roll over, Roll over....
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I started reading a book of children's nursery rhymes to Hyrum. He continues to be very interested in poetry. Among his favorites in the book are "The Rainbow Fairies," "Winken, Blinken, and Nod," and "Mud." The amazing thing to me was the other night this week when we sat down to read Rainbow Fairies and he read along with me. I stopped reading and let him recite the vast majority of it without any help. Now when we read it, I'll point to each word as he 'reads' it, sometimes with help. It's a fairly long poem for him.

About two nights ago I asked if he was going to read Rainbow Fairies or if I should. He answered, "You read it. I don't read much yet."

Relatedly, as he got in his pajamas today I was going to help him. He stopped me and said, "I'll do it, Dad. I'm good at that."

Short Review: The Hope

2011-05-25T08:06:00.000-04:00

I read Herman Wouk's masterpieces, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, in high school for fun and loved them. They tell the story of the second World War in its magnificent sweep. Detailed, poignant, and stirring, the story and characters have remained with me ever since.

Which is a problem when I picked up his history of the state of Israel, The Hope. One might be forgiven for thinking he only has so many great fictional characters in him, but the main characters are shockingly similar. When the main character met up with a quirky girl much younger than him, I knew exactly what role she was going to play in the rest of the book ... and I'm right.

In fact, I've guessed every major character-plot development to the point that I start skimming to find one of the actual historical figures so I know something real is about to happen. It's very sad. Wouk tells his stories on multiple levels and having one of them essentially skipable does a number to the rest of the book.

If you're only going to read one, I'd go for the WWII account. If you know you are going to read both, I'd read Israel first in the hope that the longer story and greater detail in the WWII will keep you interested in the full story.

The strange part for me is the main character's name. It's just odd, in today's age, thinking that "Barak" is the Hebrew name a good Jewish boy chooses for himself to replace his Germanic/Christian name. It's hard to wrap my head around.

I wonder when this will come to Nigeria....

2011-05-24T10:27:00.000-04:00

What is your daddy like?

2011-05-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

I gave Hyrum and M the same lesson for family home evening and for home teaching. As part of that, I drew an implicit analogy between their fathers and our Heavenly Father. I first asked a series of questions about their fathers I figured they could answer, then the same questions about God.

The answers I got were not quite what I expected.

Hyrum's:
What is faith? "In the Lord!" [We had a short discussion about faith in Jesus]

Who is your daddy? [point at me]
Where does your daddy live? "At home."
What is your daddy like? Tell me about your daddy. "Daddy's home." --- coming home from Nigeria was clearly a highlight of his life.
Mommy tried to help me: What does Daddy look like? "Sunday." --- Yes, I was in a white shirt still.

Who is God? "Jesus!" [We had a short discussion about the Godhead]
Where does God live? "In Heaven."
What is God like? "He likes it when we pray to Him."

M's answers:
Who is your daddy? [point at her dad]
Where does your daddy live? [points at her heart.] He lives in your heart? [Flustered, she points at the floor.] He lives on the floor? [She whispers to Mommy that he lives here.] Yes, he lives here.
What is your daddy like? "Spicy food!" [We all bust out laughing.] "Daddy likes spicy food."

Who is God? "Jesus!" [I'm beginning to see a pattern here. We all talk about it.]
Where does God live? [points up] The ceiling? "He lives in the sky."
Her mother asks what that place in the sky is called. [ponders] "The Kingdom of Heaven."
What is God like? [points at her daddy] "All in white." [She then confers in a whisper with her mother that God is good and that He loves her.]

AUN

2011-05-22T17:04:00.000-04:00

I've seen a sketch of what AUN is going to look like, and it's pretty nice: 20 main campus buildings, bunch of dorms and other facilities. Some people look at it and think it's already there. When they get there, they ask, "Where's the rest of it?"

This is the building with most of the teachers and classrooms. I'll be on the second floor.

Across the way from it is what I'll call the administration building. The library takes up the left half of the bottom floor and there are other admin offices throughout it, but the President's office is in the other building. HR, finance, and other offices are across the street mingled with the international school.

That's about it so far.

There are dorms to house the ~1300 students. There's a cafeteria and a vehicle maintenance shop for the fleet of AUN shuttles to take me to work.

They are building a new library. From one day to the next I could see progress being made on it. I think the next one they are building after this is the real admin building. Each of these will then free up more space in the building I've called the admin building for teachers and classrooms. According to the sketch, both the buildings that are currently up are for classrooms.

Speaking of classrooms, here is one. The current department chair was teaching a review session during the 5/6 week summer term. I was surprised how relieved I am to discover just how casual their business casual is. Here I've been ramping up my wardrobe and getting used to tucking in my shirt and all the rest ... I can wear my Hawaiian shirts to work!

One last look at my future office on the way out. There's this really long driveway to get the gate, another indication of the big plans the Founder (former Nigerian vice-president) and American University have for the campus they hope will become the greatest university in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nomnomgeria

2011-05-21T13:37:00.000-04:00

I thought I had already shared this with you, but I guess I hadn't.

I enjoyed the food in Nigeria. This was my breakfast at the hotel. Starting at the top and going clockwise, that's a wedge of pounded yam (dry) standing in the place of a hash brown, boiled potatoes (teeny), boiled eggs, your standard buttery roll, and fried bananas (yum!).

I think I had fried bananas 3-4 times in the 3-4 days I was there. We're talking staple food. Add to that banana bread and hearing about multiple banana recipes and I know there are bananas in Nigeria. I mentioned once upon a time on my work blog that Ugandans eat about 3 times their weight in bananas every year. I figured that I eat Joy's weight in bananas, but not mine. That may change out there.

The chickens and cows are a lot leaner than ours, so even though there is chicken and beef, you get a leg-thigh combo at it looks like wing. There's a lot of fish. A lot.

Apparently you have to know the right places to shop for food. There are plenty of people willing to sell you meat, for instance: they carry it in baskets in the hot sun all day to wherever you will buy it. So you talk to your friendly neighborhood expats or your cook or someone and they'll get you to the safer, higher quality meat. I was thankful I had brought dental floss with me because the meat was remarkably good at fitting between my teeth.

Or you come here to the University Club (members only) for drinks and dinner. Restaurant meal - $6.50. Two pools and a jaccuzzi, weight room, volleyball, tennis courts. Nice place. Friday is pizza night. Saturday there are vegetables you can't find otherwise, likes broccoli or eggplant. They play some games, mostly just hang out and chat.

One of the trusted places is a store called Luka. Luka's was described as "a Walmart inside a 7-11." The place, as you can see, is packed tight. My instructions from Joy were to find out what foods they had, and I figured the fastest way to do that was to take a lot of pictures. So I went around every aisle taking pictures like these of everything on the shelves.

It's also a little like Cosco in that, if you see something you want, you get it because the odds are it won't be there next week. This candy was brand new, for instance. A month or two ago they got in some Christmas treats.

Cereals, spices, rice
Deodorant, makeup, nail care
Shirts, hot pots, sandals
More bug spray than you can imagine
Bread, eggs, water, juice
Canned veggies, canned fruits
Heinz, Mayo, Mustard,
Bleach, furniture polish, carpet cleaner...
The list goes on and on.

I had to explain to just about everyone I met what in the world I was doing. The store owner behind the counter was also mighty curious. I explained that I was coming back in two months to live and shop there and my wife wanted to know what they had. He was satisfied.

For contrast, the video shows a few seconds of driving through the "modern market." It's modern because it is newer than where the old marketplace was. You pay 20N to get in (~12 cents) and then it's small stalls packed in TIGHT. Food, clothing, fabric, electronics, movies, you name it.

The family I was staying with mentioned that the one time living in Yola is not cheaper than living in the US is food. Particularly if you want to buy all the Western brands from Luca's. Calculating from what they spend, it might be a little cheaper for us overall, but it's also clear it'll be another dietary transition for us: carbs are cheap and plentiful, meat also plentiful, but the fruits and veggies are much further between. That, and you shouldn't use the tap water to wash your veggie.

Exciting News: Going to Nigeria ... again!

2011-05-20T22:29:00.001-04:00

While Derrill was in Nigeria this week, he confirmed to the president of the American University of Nigeria that he would be coming to work there for the next three years. We have a job to look forward to!

"In Nigeria," says Joy obviously. "So we're moving there."

I was impressed while I was there with the friendliness of the people, how eager my colleagues were to have me there, and the real opportunity to do some good in the world.

We have been quite coy about all this online up til now. We didn't want to jinx anything by sharing too many opinions publicly online before a deal had been made. Up until the decision was reached (D hadn't finalized it fully in his own mind until Sunday night and told the president on Monday) we had been in contact will several other possible universities, each interesting in their own way.

Even though we have been silent online, "we have been thinking and praying about this decision for a long time." It's a pretty big step for us, and not one I think we had predicted going into this job market. But we now feel it's the right step for us now and are looking forward to it.

Baby Lavinia appears to be very excited to share about Nigeria. She's jumping all over inside Mommy.

"I have been feeling like we might end up going to Nigeria since before Derrill went to Nebraska in March. I had told Derrill that Nebraska or Nigeria sounded like the most likely for doing the kind of teaching he is interested in doing right now. Then Nebraska fell through pretty quickly."

Each additional school that contacted me for an interview really disturbed Joy, who wanted the uncertainty ended. "Ya! I kept feeling like we were going to go to Nigeria, and then I would be really stressed about Nigeria for a few days, and then I would feel peace about Nigeria, and then I would feel stress about it again. That's what I did for the last two months."

People have asked us if we're excited. My typical response was that, yes, that was one reaction we had. Fear was another. There were many others. Several of our concerns had to do with the fact that we will be the only members of the Church in Yola. Even if Nigeria is prone to civil disobedience and conflict, the conflict is in other states of the country: Adamawa state where we would be is very peaceful traditionally and calm.

Now that I have been there, however, I can just say "yes." I'm excited. The overwhelming answer from the Spirit as we've prayed about the decision has been peace, and not just general warm fuzzies, but specific reassurances about specific concerns. After all, anywhere you go there will be challenges. If God wants you to learn something, like patience, He can accomplish that in NYC just as well as Nigeria.

"Oh, I don't want to live in NYC! Sorry, but Nigeria doesn't sound too bad compared to NYC. Apologies to anyone who lives there. I am not a city person. Nothing personal. I wouldn't want to live in Lagos either..."

"Especially since Derrill made the decision, we have had continual peace instead of just moments of peace. Satan seems to be a little concerned about us going. I was in a lot of turmoil the few days before we made the final decision, to which I attribute Satan trying to sway me against the decision."

"Some of the reactions we've gotten from people as we talked about this have only reached the fear part. And some people have been very excited for us and talk about what an adventure it will be. We feel the weight of all of it and know that Heavenly Father will help us to overcome any challenges in getting or being there -- known or unknown -- as we know we'd have challenges anywhere we are in the world. With God, nothing is impossible."

Yola is way on the far east on the river that runs into Cameroon. Lagos is in the far southwest. Nigeria is 2.5 times as large as California. There is an LDS temple in the south east near Port Harcourt.

This is a picture of the inner court of the faculty building where I will be working. I'll be on the second floor.

The family I was staying with kept asking me how I was in my decision process after each trek to see something on my list -- housing, shopping, the town, the school, etc. Every time they asked, I had been feeling just a touch overwhelmed. I answered I was still in information gathering mode and needed some time to process. Once I wrote my thoughts down to share them with Joy -- assuming the internet connection would work -- I felt a lot better.

It's not necessarily going to be easy. That's not the point. Knowing a lot more about some of the specific challenges involved, I'm confident we can deal with them and find a lot of happiness there in Yola.

First Impressions of Nigeria

2011-05-18T19:38:00.000-04:00

I already had written this email at the end of my first evening in Nigeria, only to have the internet crash on me and never get this computer back online until I got to the Newark airport again ... whereupon the post I wrote was lost. So I'll try this again.

I flew out to Nigeria Thur-Fri to visit the American University of Nigeria so I could scope out the area and the job they had offered me. There are only so many flights between the capital, Abuja, and Yola so I got to wait overnight. This is what I saw as I stepped out of the airport.

My very first impression looking out the airplane window was confusion. Abuja is the capital, right? So where is the city? I saw red dirt, patches of green grass, some trees California would be proud of, and shrubs. Where is the city? Finally we flew over some blue-roofed houses with brown dirt roads, but it was just a collection of buildings, not a city. Where was the city??

Turns out, I guessed right: the airport is 45 km away from the capital. While I waited for my ride, several taxi drivers offered their help, one of them offering to let me use his phone to call my ride for ~70 cents. A friendly guard let me call for free and I was soon picked up by AUN staff. They were trying to help two other people also heading for Yola, but the 4:30 flight got canceled. So they waited around to see if they were going to create an 8:30 flight, but that idea also got canceled at 7:30. So we three hung around the airport and at a nearby restaurant for three hours before we all gave up and went to the Top View Hotel.

Mentioning the Top View to AUN-affiliates produces very interesting reactions, mostly along the lines of "oh yes, I tried the haggis once. That was memorable." I'm not entirely sure why. Okay, so the bathroom faucets popped off in my hand. They popped right back on again! Okay, so the bathroom comes with its own water heater for the shower. So did every other AUN tub/shower I saw. And the size of room is at least twice as large as anything Europe has offered me on a work trip, plus a wide screen TV.

The more memorable thing is that Nigerian beds surprise Westerners. The pillows are not made of rocks. They might be made out of softened wood. That means I pretty much loved them (good, firm pillows!) The beds are also pretty firm. Supposed to be good for you, right?

The internet worked, the food was good and ample (see my last post), and I got an amazing 10 hours of sleep after my sleepless flying.

Traffic on the interstate connecting airport and city was ample. In addition to the massive traffic going to the airport, there were pedestrians all over, enough that in one place they had set up an impromptu marketplace: postcards and pictures, shirts, one stand consisted of a large umbrella with brassieres hanging from it, people selling food.... The interstate was in fine shape, though there's also a lot of roadwork being done so there were a lot of road splits and mergings. There are far more motorcycles on the road, not all of them use their lights, and they drive about like our motorcyclists do which is to say you really need to watch out for them. The main driving difference I observed was that the dashed white lines that separate lanes are regarded more as suggestions than laws, there are no posted speed limits, the use of turn signals is nil, and stopping for police can be optional. In other words, it felt safer than driving in New York City. The roads themselves, in Abuja and Yola, were in far better condition than I had been led to expect, with only one major pothole on the main road. Non-main roads are another story.

Bath time Reading

2011-05-15T20:16:00.000-04:00

Hyrum was really cute this morning. I had him take a bath before breakfast (Derrill usually does the weekend bath) and as he started playing and I was leaving the room for a moment Hyrum asked me if I would read to him. I said ok, and just picked up my Monson book that I am reading as part of my scripture time. I read to him for fifteen minutes while he played relatively quietly in the bathtub. It has been a while since I read to him at bath time and he didn't seem to mind my choice in book. So it was pleasant for both of us. Joy

Where in the World is Daddy? (Carmen San Diego?)

2011-05-15T19:59:00.000-04:00

Daddy has traveled to may places in the last 6 months or so which is a good portion of Hyrum's life. I am starting to see a pattern of interest in our map at home. When Daddy is home the map is unused and unloved, it just sits in the bathroom against the wall. It started as only a map of the united states mounted on thick paper for tracking where we had applied and where we had interviews (we got it three years ago). I have pulled it out whenever we start looking for a job, but then we just stop using it after a while, too many applications and not enough interviews.

When ever daddy leaves Hyrum wants to see the map and put pins where people are that he loves. I didn't notice at first that it coincided with daddy being gone, because he wants to know where everyone is not just daddy. So when Daddy went to Denver we charted it with pins, and when he went to Nebraska, to Washington DC. But we had to copy a map of the world, because Daddy went to Copenhagen Denmark and now daddy is in Nigeria.

So with daddy in Nigeria, it all started again. I start by showing him with pins where we are and where daddy is. We usually follow his plane routes. Then he asked me where Pop and Boo are, where is grandma Joy, where are Steve and Emilee and as an important part of the family where is Disney World. We have been to Disney land and I have pointed it out to Hyrum before, but it doesn't hold the same honored place as Disney World. After he has made sure that everyone has their pin and has been located then we can put the map away again. He is just so cute.

Speaking of daddy being gone, Hyrum keeps saying things that show he either doesn't want daddy to be gone or he keeps forgetting that daddy is gone. After nursery today Hyrum said "Let's go find daddy". I can't remember the other comments, but off and on he says stuff like that. I always remind him of when daddy will be home and we count the days, because counting is so comforting to him. He even told daddy today that he would be coming home in 3 days. :D

Random Prices 1

2011-05-14T04:53:00.000-04:00

Right now, the $/Naira exchange rate is about $1/N150 (or $6.50 = N1,000). For our own future reference, here are the first handful of prices I've found:

Taxi driver offered to let me use his cell phone: N100 ($0.65)
Meat pie at airport restaurant = N220 ($1.50) Most dishes between N150 and N500.
Hotel room 10-15,000N ($65 - $100), complementary breakfast (pictures forthcoming)

There's a card here with a list of laundry prices. The Check it Out moment: they'll dry clean a shirt for about $2 and a suit for about $7. At the hotel. In Denmark, that service cost about $30.

The meat pie was pretty good. It would be a little spicy for Joy. Two filled me quite well, though one would have done it with a couple vegetable sides. The crust is less flaky than a pasty, fried instead of baked, and filled with beef, onions, and spices instead of beef, lamb, and turnip. One of my traveling companions was satisfied with just one pie and the other opted for the chicken and rice pilaf which she gave a poor rating.

Movie review: Farrell redeemed and other stories

2011-05-14T03:58:00.000-04:00

I realize that the last thing anyone wants to hear about from the guy in Nigeria is movie reviews, but I haven't done much here yet ... just flown around on very little sleep and watch movies or work to pass the time. At least it shows I'm doing well and nothing interesting and terrible enough has happened to supersede my interest in the films. I'm really getting most of my movie watching or book reading done on planes this year.

1 - During my last trip home from Denmark, I started watching "The Seven Samurai," a black and white Chinese film about a poor village who hire seven samurai to defend them from bandits. On the plane to Germany "yesterday" they happened to have "The Magnificent Seven," Hollywood's western remake starring Yul Brynner that I'm pretty sure made it to a great film works list. Having watched the first part of the Samurai made the Magnificent much more interesting. Not only are most of the scenes taken directly from the Chinese version, a lot of the lines are direct translations. The villagers decide to "talk to the old man" who lives outside the village for advice. They decide who the good Samurai and Gunslingers are using the same conversations. Very interesting. I doubt a modern studio would get away with it. So I'm betting I now know which of the Samurai are going to survive.

2 - Once upon a time, I decided that no good movie could come from Jim Carrey (whom the Lovely and Gracious refers to as "Evil evil evil") or Will Farrell. I know my intelligence and probably a few other sensibilities will be horribly insulted and I'll probably be creeped out at some point too. There's just no point even watching them. Then one day I watched "The Majestic" and decided that Carrey could actually do a decent job if he wasn't mugging and abusing the camera every ten seconds. Yesterday I also found an exception for Farrell, whose movies aspire to sophomorism but he can't even manage that. I confess, "Megamind" is awesome. I loved it. Oh, was that Farrell? Well, good for him for picking one decent part. Farrell's impersonation of Brando needs a lot of work, and I can't help wondering how Robin Williams would have done it, but that was a great story, less predictable than most, and a lot of fun. [Mind you, I still avoid Carrey and will still avoid Farrell as a general rule, but it's nice to have something nice to say about them.] I look forward to watching Megamind again.

3 - "Green Hornet" wasn't bad either. Seth Rogen, who not only stars as the Hornet but helped write the thing, I think is really trying to ask himself, "How would Zack from Saved By the Bell play this role?" and then overdoes it deliberately. They admit to being campy and decide to have fun with it instead of trying to be a serious superhero film, of which there is just about only one kind (oh, what shall I do with this awesome responsibility that is thrust upon me? I'll ditch it to save those I love. No, I must take it up again for those I love.) The comedy occasionally strained my credulity, but not badly. Kato steals the show, as apparently happened in other iterations of the franchise (Kato = Bruce Lee). Not that the Lovely and Gracious would be interested in the movie, but if she were ever forced to watch it, I would advise her to skip the first fifteen minutes.

I'm pretty sure there was another film in there somewhere, but it apparently failed to capture my interest. Ah, the happy ways we while away the midnight hours without sleep. I did get some work done, but once I realized I was misspelling every third word and leaving sentences half-completed all over the place, I decided I had best call it done for now. I did also make several attempts to sleep, but none were successful. I got a very full night's sleep in my hotel and now it's time for breakfast.

"Havana" Hyrum's Hat Trick

2011-05-09T19:43:00.000-04:00

Hi there. Hy here having some haberdashery hijinx. I grabbed Daddy's hat and put my hat on top. This is always great fun. Then I grabbed Pop's hat and Mommy's and stacked them up. I AM the four-hat wonder!

Mwahahaha.

Oops! This is harder than it looks. Let me try again.

Almost got it...

Stay up there, you!

Ta-da!

Of course, Mommy knows how to do it best. She's cool like that.

Crystal Ball 2: A Little Clearer

2011-05-08T19:45:00.000-04:00

Subject to everything falling into place the way we expect, this is what we're looking at:

We would leave Ithaca July 20 and fly to Salt Lake. Oh, family in Utah! We're coming to visit. We'll drop off some stuff with some lucky family to watch for us.

We spend some time in UT, Vegas, and Santa Barbara. We bless Lavinia probably the 31st, possibly the 24th. The 24th would be kinda cool (Pioneer day and all that) but might be more problematic travel-wise. We'll see.

Some time while we're out and about we need a pediatrician to give Lavinia a Tdap shot (Tetanus/Diphtheria). If you can are in SB or UT and can help us get in touch with a pediatrician you like, please let us know!

We would then leave from Salt Lake to our New Home around August 3.

If you are family or dear friends in UT, Vegas, Santa Barbara, or along the way and would really like to see us and our new bambina, please let us know! We would love to see you!

Hyrum at Disneyworld

2011-05-08T16:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Grandma Boo who had a camera to bring, we now have some pictures of Hyrum at DisneyWorld last month.

Grandma found Hyrum a new hat and he became Woody for the trip.

Sadly her camera didn't work too well (I'm guessing since I don't have any of the shots I took) when he met up with Buzz and Woody the first day. It was a little hilarious. There he was in his Woody pajamas from Disneyland and his brand new Woody hat. Woody knew what to expect and started walking to Hyrum with his arms outstretched.

Hyrum ran toward him with a happy scream ... and right past him. Woody kept wandering forward, wondering what had happened as Hy grabbed Buzz by the legs for a great big hug. Joy explained to Woody that he was always #2 in Hyrum's eyes ... which didn't go over well. I think I saw them fighting again afterwards (j/k). It was fun.

This was the first time, though, that Hyrum played at being Woody. Normally he is Buzz, Mom is Woody, and I'm Rex. But at Disney he was Woody, I got to be Buzz :), Mom is Jessie, with Pop as Bullseye (Woody's horse), and Grandma taking my duties as Rex.

The best part of that is that people (tourists and staff alike) would ask him constantly where Bullseye was. Well, Pop was talking care of Grandma Boo, so he answered, "He's at Boo's," which I'm sure sounded like "booze" to everyone else. But he knew where Bullseye was.

Enjoying Jungle Cruise.

Donald in Africa.

We decided unanimously that Africa has the best character breakfast just in terms of the breakfast. Not only do they have the staples at all the other buffets (Mickey waffles, eggs and bacon, pancakes, donuts, fruit, disappointing biscuits and gravy), they had African dishes as well.

Hyrum loving Pop.

Carousels were clearly one of the big winners this trip. He really liked going around and around on any ride that would let him.

Hyrum helped me capture the evil Zurg.

"*Gasp!* Zurg!" he says, pointing.

Hy officially was looking forward to meeting Mickey's friends plus Buzz and Woody. Even though Pooh's friends didn't feature in his schedule, he sure was happy to see them.

Speaking of going around and around, the one ride Hy asked for by name without seeing were the Tea Cups. I got them going SUPER fast. He clung to the side with one arm, the biggest, happiest smile on his face. "Then my hat fell," he says. Yes, his hat flew off, and he bonked his head a few times. This is him at the end of the ride, trying to get the world to stop spinning. He denied being dizzy.

This is Hyrum with Disney Magic Crayons. The Magic Crayons look different from the crayons we got everywhere else and they magically appeared one by one, sneaking among the others while he was trying to count how many crayons he had. This made counting difficult, but all the more fun.

Celebration!

2011-05-06T20:20:00.001-04:00

I have a working camera again!

It takes big pictures. Below the fold are the fist images my camera saw on its way in from the mailbox (eager, much, Derrill?) and my miserable boy suitably numbed by Backyardigans (More on that in another post)

Click to see the full picture, I guess. I, uh, I think I don't need the full 12 mpx on Every shot. Especially if I'm not even going to bother holding still

Star Wars meets French Existentialism

2011-05-02T12:19:00.002-04:00

Have a Cow

2011-05-01T22:16:00.000-04:00

One of the little phrases Joy brought to our marriage was "Have a cow!" She'd say it constantly!

But I ruined it. I joked that our baby's first words would be "ha'cow." She stopped right then. Pretty sad, especially since "ha'cow" was such a sweet sounding phrase.

Last Sunday Joy had a conversation with Hyrum. He was flipping out, in need of nap time. Joy said, "You are having a cow."

"I'm a cow," he proudly announced. "Baa! Baa!"

For the rest of the drive, he kept telling us he WAS a cow, and then bleated. We couldn't help him moo, even though we gave several examples and we know he is perfectly capable of mooing. He thought he was hilarious.

Looking in the Crystal Ball

2011-05-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

There's a lot Joy and I still don't know about what is going to happen in the next few months, but for anyone interested, we do have some decisions made at least. So here's a rough timeline, if everything works out the way we think. It brings to mind the old line, "If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans." These should be worth a chuckle.

We hope to have heard back from any school still interested in me this week. Within the next couple weeks I will be flying out to visit Nigeria. We hope to have a final decision about where then or very shortly thereafter. So we'll stop being silent/coy/private in a few weeks.

Baby Lavinia arrives June 24 and we begin a frantic dash to get her passported and visad.

Early July we will move out of Ithaca and visit our families in California and Utah, blessing Lavinia in my parents' ward.

Late July or early August we leave for our grand, three year adventure.

I'm sorry we've been keeping rather quiet about things online. It's certainly not for lack of interest as we can find precious little else to talk about that is quite so engaging. Until a decision is made, though, we would rather not jinx anything. The places still on the table are each very interesting prospects that we are excited about and we'd love to tell you more ... soon. We just know we probably won't be in Ithaca for more than another 10 weeks.

Hyrum's Top Ten - Mar/Apr

2011-05-01T16:36:00.000-04:00

1 - Hark All Ye Nations - 65
2 - "Happy Bear" Tapper - 60      I don't know its real name. That's the name I gave it back when
                                                         I listened to it as a kid.
3 - Maria Wedding March - 37
      I Seen Troubles - 37
5 - Super Mario Theme - 34
6 - Give a Little Whistle - 31
7 - Tarantara - 30
      A Musicological Journey Through the 12 Days of Christmas - 30
9 - I'll Make a Man Out of You - 27
10 - What Have We Learned Today (ukulele) - 23
11 - High on the Mountain Top - 22
        WALL-E First Date - 22

Number Associations

2011-04-27T20:41:00.002-04:00

On Sunday, a conversation happened without provocation:
"Daddy, you are number 2. Pop and Boo are number 7."
Who are you, Hyrum?
"I am number 1."
Who is Mommy?
"Mommy is number 3."
Who is number 4?
"Althea."
Who is number 5?
"Brother F____."
Who is number 6?
"..... Pop is number 6 and Boo is number 7!"
I see.

I asked him later in the day who each of the numbers were. He moved Bro. F___ up to #5 and his daughter (Althea) to #4. We give them rides to church on Sunday and he was thinking about them when he made the first numbering system. He held to the numbers on Tuesday.

The fun part is when I ask him:
Who is number 8?
"I don't remember!" *face palm*

Another day this week he and Joy got out his number puzzle. He pulled out the numbers one by one and said
"#1 How we got the Book of Mormon.
#2 Lehi warns the people.
#3 Lehi Leaves Jerusalem...."

And so on through as many chapters of his Book of Mormon stories book as he could remember. Every day for Jesus Time we've been reading from one of his scripture stories book, and lately Joy added to that letting him play on the computer (!!!!) with a Book of Mormon stories CD that will read the stories to him and let him click on words. He particularly likes #14 Abinadi and King Noah and #20 Alma and Nehor.

Today when the father of King Lamoni "got angrier and drew his sword to kill Lamoni" Hyrum recognized the word pattern and said it was just like Nehor who "got angry and drew his sword.and killed Gideon." Wow. His favorite Nehor picture is attached. He makes a point of telling us which pictures and which pages in books are his favorite.

Joy wonders what it will be like when we introduce him to The Prisoner! ROFL.

Favorite Books

2011-04-24T19:54:00.000-04:00

The last couple months Hy has been rediscovering books. Mostly it's Dr. Seuss, and mostly it's Bartholomew Cubbins. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a smash hit that he wanted us to read again and AGAIN. We asked him to please choose another book in between the 500 hats. It's been a lot of fun, mostly.

Yesterday I helped him discover a new favorite book. The Lesson by Carol Lynn Pearson. "He seemed to understand a lot of it too," Joy says. "He's talked to me about it several times today -- having problems and ... I didn't understand what he wanted to do about them, but he understood." In the fable, a boy named Robert goes to school and discovers math problems. The math problems are hard, but he is happy whenever he solves them. I suspect that the numbers in the beginning of the book are a large part of its draw. Then one day his teacher announces they will do story problems.

The first story problem is: If you have 3 cars and 1 truck and Joey comes and takes 2 cars and the truck, how many times should you hit Joey?

"And he identifies with that." He puzzles it out with Robert, and is pleased when Robert discovers the answer is no times. As the book goes on, Robert's problems become more and more difficult. Hyrum's interest in the book varies depending on my reactions to it. Whenever I start choking up or tearing because of one the problems, he gets very interested in the book. When I manage to go several pages without difficulty, he starts talking about something else.

... he heard his teacher say, "Robert, if your family moved to a small house in a big city and you had to leave behind two aquariums and one dog and your best friend..."
"Oh no!" interrupted Robert. "I don't want that problem. Give me a different problem!"
"But I can't," said the teacher. "This is your problem and you must solve it."...

At the end of each lesson, it reads, "and he moved up a grade." By the end of the book, I am feeling ever so much less like that is an accomplishment and more and more dread at the inexorable climb.

It's a wonderful, moving book that Joy introduced to our home. Hyrum asked for it again tonight, in addition to talking to Joy about it several times. We can highly recommend it.

So this is Hyrum's latest literary addiction.

A Matter of Priorities

2011-04-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

Occasionally Hyrum does not want to follow the program. When he decides he'd rather play than pray or do something else religious, we figure it's important enough to talk to him about it. We try to help him see that "Jesus is more important than _______" Buzz, Woody, or blocks. And we'll quiz him on what is more important until he can give the right answers. By that point, he's usually willing to come around and willingly participate.

Yesterday, he was playing with his alphabet blocks, arranging them to form the alphabet like he'd seen in a book. Joy promised him that he could play with them again after quiet time. The normal schedule (an important thing for little Hy) goes: wake up, potty, snack, play. He looks forward to his snack very much because he gets chocolate cake. "And it reminds him of Backyardigans these days," Joy adds.

So yesterday Joy got him up from his nap and said it was time for snack. No no, he was quite insistent. It was time to play with alphabet blocks! "I told him, if you choose to play with the alphabet blocks, we won't be having snack because this is the time for snack. You can play with the blocks after snack if you want."

He responded, "Mommy, alphabet blocks are more important than snack!"

"What could I say?" Let the boy play with the blocks.

Hyrum Remembers: Aquarium

2011-04-23T15:23:00.001-04:00

Hyrum's Aunt Emilee volunteers at the Mystic Aquarium in CT. We got to visit it when we visited them this week. As we were leaving, it seemed the only thing that had impressed our little one was the penny funnel (e.g. picture right, or video), but then again that was the last thing he had seen and the only thing that made him laugh heartily.

Today I asked him what he liked about the aquarium, now that we're a few days away. He remembers ... "Nemo Fish!" As I listed off other critters he saw, he responded most positively to the "Jellyfish" exhibit and the "starfish" that he got to touch. He also remembered pushing a lot of "buttons" and thought that was fun.

Here are more pictures of the aquarium than you can shake a fishstick at. I was impressed to discover "skunk clownfish" and the moon jellyfish that they took out on the space program. I touched a shark!

Success

2011-04-23T09:19:00.000-04:00

I bought the bulbs 2.5 years ago. I planted them 1.5 years ago. They finally blossom to bid us farewell. Or one of them does anyway.

Conversations with a Toddler

2011-04-23T09:14:00.000-04:00

"Mommy, feed me breakfast."
Hyrum, will you feed me breakfast?
"Mommy, feed ME breakfast."
Yes. I will feed you breakfast. Then will you feed me breakfast?
"No. You can make breakfast for yourself."
O-ho-ho! And when will you be able to make breakfast for yourself?
"... When I'm five. But I'm three."

---------------------------------------------

Today Hyrum spelled out "Toy Story Mania," "Buzz," "Woody," and "Rex" phonetically before running out of O's to do "Slinky Dog"

----------------------------------------------

Hy and Mommy played "The Book of Mormon Challenge" today, Hyrum winning handily both times. Even though he had won, he insisted Mommy also finish the game and make it to Heaven.

When Mommy landed on the square that says "You forgot to pray," she told Hyrum that they really had forgotten to pray. They set the board aside and prayed. Then Hyrum told Mommy she didn't have to lose a turn because now she had prayed.

Things Hyrum Remembers: Disney World

2011-04-19T22:00:00.000-04:00

Hyrum's intention going into Disney World was to find characters. He wanted to see, in this order: Mickey, Buzz, WALL-E, and Pop and Boo (Grandpa and Grandma). WALL-E apparently lives at Tokyo. Between character breakfasts each day and finding Buzz and Woody together the first day, his character needs were met. He was excited to see anyone else along the way, but felt no need to visit any of them, unlike last trip. Joy interjects, "Except for Mary Poppins, who we saw and couldn't meet, but he wanted to. Hyrum really wanted to stop but we had to go on to a lunch reservation." He hadn't paid her much attention last time at Disneyland.

His regular refrain was "Let's go on more rides" - particularly after anything we went to that didn't impress as much... and after we got off the plane at home... and today again at the CT Mystic Aquarium.

His first ride was his clear favorite: Toy Story Midway Mania. He went on it 3 times and asked for it several more times in later days at the other parks. The other ride he asked for several times was Spaceship Earth (the Epcot ball). When he saw it, he stopped in his tracks, pointed, and said, "Daddy! It's Epcot!" He took a nap in it the first time we went through.

He also got used to eating at restaurants. "I want to go to restaurant and eat." Not that he ate anything they offered - he only barely sipped the milk - but he quickly learned that was where he got fed. (Actually, today he asked to go to a restaurant too.*) As we were waiting Friday evening for our last restaurant, he announced "I want to go to the dark restaurant with the cartoons." The Sci-Fi Diner that shows old scary B-movie trailers and a few outer space cartoons was memorable enough to make him want to go back. It was Joy's favorite restaurant when she was there last time, but she sees it with new eyes having brought a toddler there. "I still like it for me," she says, "I really like the atmosphere. Then I realized it really focuses on horror films...."

Hyrum is now big enough to go on water rides and we took him on the Animal Kingdom raft ride. We told him he was going to get wet. We gave him a special rain slicker. He still got wetter than anyone, which made his lower lip quiver. I asked at the end if the ride was fun. "Yes." Do you want to ride it again? "No." He reminded us of the ride today, talking about the kids in another raft who were screaming and that he didn't want to go on it again.

He randomly talked to us today about a hedge maze that Grandma Boo and Mommy showed him in Epcot.

He remembers watching the 30 minute musical play version of Finding Nemo. Joy sang a parody version of one of the songs and Hyrum sang the real words in response.

He hasn't talked about these yet, but we know he particularly enjoyed the Country Bear Jamboree (he clapped along regularly and in pretty good rhythm), the Tea Cups (asked for them by name before we got to the park and loved how dizzy I made him - boy, that was a blissful boy in the cup with me!), the line for Winnie the Pooh, and the trains around Germany. He did not enjoy Prince Caspian (dark and scary) or the Hall of Presidents (nap time!).

Hyrum demonstrated the ability to tell the difference between Disneyland and Disney World on t-shirts. "Pop, your shirt says Disneyland, not Disney World!"

* - Joy tells me that even before Disney, he asked to go to a restaurant. We go to one so rarely I'm not sure how that happened. It's probably because we went to one in March when Pop was in town for a night and took us to Applebee's. Joy told him that we couldn't because Pop wasn't there. He said, "No. Go to restaurant without Pop." Joy couldn't figure out where he was coming from either.

This kid is too cute

2011-04-19T08:45:00.001-04:00

Steve and Emilee just gave Hyrum a belated birthday present. She told him to close his eyes and hold out his hands. When he opened his eyes, he saw a coloring/sticker book he was very excited about. Emie then told Joy to close her eyes and hold out her hands too. Emie had made a lovely baby quilt for Lavinia.

Then Hyrum told me to close my eyes and hold out my hands. Obedient, I heard him say, "Now, Emilee, you should give Daddy something."

Disney Magic

2011-04-17T16:10:00.000-04:00

We got a surprise invitation last month to join my parents at DisneyWorld for a few days. AWESOME! We flew out Tuesday, spent Wed-Fri at the parks, and returned yesterday. Hyrum's first visit was a wonderful time, and well in keeping with the traditions of the Magic Grandma.

Grandma Boo got a lot of quality time with him, riding in her scooter around the parks. She would pause regularly along the way to point out something interesting to him and explain it all, from topiaries to Liberty Bell replicas to carvings and flowers. When a bit of puffy flower-seed floated by on the wind, she caught it and showed Hyrum the "Disney Magic" that had brought such a wondrous thing to them. To Grandma at Disney, the world is full of Disney Magic. It made the trip all the more enchanting for Hyrum.

Then I started getting into the act:

Friday night at dinner, Hyrum was playing with his crayons while we finished our meal. I asked Hyrum to count his crayons. There were 9. I asked him to count them again, just to be sure. While he was distracted, I added a crayon. He returned his attention to his crayons and discovered the new one. He pointed out to everyone that it looked different from the other crayons! Grandma told him it was Disney Magic. Disney Magic produced three more crayons over the next while as he counted and recounted and never came up with the same number twice. Those four crayons became "the magic crayons." He asked to color with the magic crayons on the flight home and was disappointed today at church that the crayons I offered to let him color on his church program weren't magical.

Friday night as we got ready to sleep at Disney for the last time, Hyrum mourned that there would be "no more Disney magic." Oh, Hyrum, you'll take a little Disney magic with you. You are full of Disney magic.

We've reaped at least two interesting bits of Disney magic already. Up until the trip, Hy has complained most bitterly about needing to "practice potty." He dislikes it more and more, making it less and less fruitful. He hasn't earned a potty sticker or prize in a long time. During one pit stop when he was putting up yet another fight, I got fed up and called him a baby. Big boys say "I need to pee" and go to the bathroom by themselves. Babies just pee and need their diapers changed all the time. I said something to the effect of "And we'll have to keep on doing this until you can learn to say 'I need to pee.'" Something about it clicked. He doesn't want to be a baby. He wants to be a big boy. All of a sudden, from one pit stop to the next, he is happy to go to the bathroom. "Yes, I need to pee!" he announces whenever we ask, even if he doesn't actually pee. Then after he pees, he tells us he's a big boy, NOT a baby. It's such a blessing. The hard part is that from the way he asks Mommy why she chooses to pee, it sounds like he thought I meant once he can say "I need to pee" he won't need to anymore.... Joy says, "For some reason, it seems like he wants it to be something he can choose. 'I don't want to poo.' I keep trying to explain it, but we haven't made any headway yet."

We're also still trying to teach Hyrum to walk. He never learned, really. He learned how to run. Running and walking are different skills, you see. The first day at Disney he ran around like his usual rambunctious self. The second day he kept up with us pretty well. I noticed on Friday that he was a) actually willing to hold my hand and b) walking a little bit behind me so that I was carrying him forward noticeably. When I slowed down, he slowed down to match. I asked if his feet hurt and he said no. Then on Saturday, he hobbled through the airport, slow as could be. I turned to Joy and said, "It's Disney Magic! He walks!" Alas, the Disney Magic has worn off and he was his usual cannonball self at church.

Comment on the road to Damascus

2011-04-03T12:32:00.001-04:00

Pres. Uchtdorf spoke about us "waiting on the road to Damascus" for a Paul-like heavenly manifestation that wipes out our doubt. He commented, among other things, that we gain a knowledge of truth by living it and moving forward, that answers come on our feet as often as on our knees.

I note that when Saul was on the road to Damascus, he was on his feet, doing the things he believed God wanted him to do. It was in that circumstance that God turned him around.

Movie review: Harry Potter 6 and Tron: Legacy

2011-04-03T11:56:00.001-04:00

I'm way late on reviewing this to do anybody any good, but I'd invite discussion if you think differently. I finally got to see HP6 on the plane in to Copenhagen and was rather disappointed. There are of course spoilers in here so I'll put it below the fold. By way of comparison, lest anyone think I'm a tough critic, I loved what they did with #4 and I liked movie #5 better than I liked book #5. This is the first of the series I thought really fell short.

I also got to see Tron: Legacy. My review of that is much shorter and I don't need to spoil anything. Here goes:

Tron 2 had some nice special effects and was great video game nerd bait. That was its job. Okay, so most of the plot and story elements were overly recycled. Okay, so they really could have done a better job developing the Tron character. Like, giving him a line? Okay, the obligatory romance was based on shared hardship instead of bonding over ANYthing they had in common other than good looks. So I could see the plot "twists" coming from 20 minutes away. So what? It was a summer action flick. With low expectations comes low responsibility. They even gave me a nice religious metaphor on our dual nature and godly sacrifice. I call that a win. Good job, team.

Now on to the high expectations fallen short.

I dislike that half the movie was spent in sepia or green sepia. I really miss the vibrant colors in the first movie.

I dislike how fast they had to make the pacing. I could fill in the answers because I've read the book twice, but there's only enough of a hint at several things that if you hadn't read it it would make no sense. I would much rather see 6 cut in two parts, or 6 and 7 told in three than see two parts of 7 and one of 6. To me, half of 7 is spent wandering around in a tent with no clue. I think you could cut a great deal from it and still have the magnificent climax. Ah well.

I especially dislike the directing. It's like if Keanu Reeves directed. To me this was supposed to be the most passionate of the books - real anguish and remorse and revenge and romance, all for more reason than "I'm portraying teenage angst" like in book 5... and they were told to deliver every line in an almost-monotone. That's fine for Snape (usually), that's his job. But not for the others. It made Hermione's revenge flat, killed the electricity between Harry and Ginny, Harry and Snape, and even Harry and Draco. Draco gets to hit Harry once and then later they're suddenly dueling and Harry nearly kills the boy. What was going on?? I think Ron got to emote a much wider range than he usually does and did a good job of it.

I disliked how they did Harry and Ginny's romance. In book/movie 5, Harry is largely clueless about relationships and women. He bumbles and fumbles and so does Ron. Suddenly in movie 6 he understands exactly what he wants, wants it passionately (and flatly), and knows how to get it. Ginny doesn't put up any fight but there's this "well, we're supposed to be awkward, so I guess we'll look away from each other" attempt but I'm just not feeling it because they're told to act so flatly. Harry never has to replace Dean ... Ginny just waltzes on up and they're a couple. And no angst over his relationship with Ron should he pursue the relationship with Ginny?? Ron doesn't even get to comment on it: Hermione has to do it for him. What?? The one nice thing is that they left Ron and Hermione's relationship more up in the air so Ron's confusion in book 7 is more understandable. But then what was this advertising picture that swept Facebook showing Hermione leaping into his arms with flame around them for a big triumphant kiss?

I also confess to being confused at some choices they made at the ending. 1) Harry gets to move. Dumbledore didn't paralyze him. ??? He honestly chooses to stand still while Dumbledore is surrounded by baddies? 2) Harry sees Snape coming up. Snape puts a hand to his mouth to suggest he remain quiet and hidden. This is entirely out of character for him. He would have been angry and sent Potter away if he saw him. It also harms the later reveal of Snape's allegiances. 3) The battle between Harry and Snape was amazingly anticlimactic. I had envisioned this near-crazed Snape, nostrils flaring, showing an emotion other than disgust for one of the few times as he tells Potter not to use his own spells on him, revelling in the revealing of himself as the Half-Blood Prince ... and here he is flat again, delivering every line the way he asks for an omelet or tells Harry not to pick his nose in potions. I also don't care for Harry being the only one to approach the body and grieve, but that was Rowling's odd choice. As if McGonagall or Madame Pomfrey wouldn't have come to see to him, and no one notices Harry "looting" the corpse in plain sight. Come on.

Jim Broadbent does a fine job as Ian Holm's Slughorn (by which I mean: I thought Bilbo was playing Slughorn until I checked IMDB - on a plane's screen it's all about the voice). He's an extremely sympathetic Slughorn. He doesn't look much like a walrus, though, as I recall Slughorn being described. I had pictured more of a diminutive Leo McKern (Rumpole, currently deceased), with a deeper, gruffer voice, more avarice than grandfatherly senility. But he'll do nicely. Given that they got everyone else spot on (other than turning the toad into an evil Donna Reed in movie 5) I can happily give them a pass on this one.

The armchair effect was brilliant. Getting the horcrux was well done, mostly. The obligatory Quidditch scene was well done, though since its primary job in the movie was to show Hermione likes Ron and we have plenty of examples of that, we probably could have dropped Quidditch and McClagen altogether to help continuity. Probably been cheaper too.

So yeah, I was really disappointed. But at least now I can watch 7 part 1 when I next run into it.

Staying Awake in Cobenhavn

2011-04-03T10:38:00.000-04:00

I'm in Copenhagen for a work conference starting tomorrow. I'll be presenting some work tomorrow and need to be well rested ... but I didn't sleep on the plane and need to stay awake now so I'll be able to sleep tonight. So I'm going to keep myself awake by putting you to sleep with a little gratuitous blogging.

Copenhagen is cloudy today but ever so much warmer than Ithaca. I visited here once, long long ago at the beginning of my postdoc with Per. That was the beginning of my involvement with the textbook on global food policy that will be published this Oct-Dec. Now we're at the beginning of another project on the political economy of government food policy, working with researchers from over 17 different countries.

This time I don't have a camera. I'm hoping to remedy that situation before Hy goes to Disneyworld in two weeks. If you would like to see my pics from the last time I was here (funny, it seems it was cloudy then too. Psh, Europe!) try here and here is where I hid the pictures of Thorvaldsen's statues of Jesus and His disciples.

I somehow managed to lose the directions to my hotel. I asked around, got directions to the wrong one that got me directions to the right one. It was a comfort to me during my wandering around to suddenly realize I had been in the area before! Despite the construction going on downtown, I recognized a lot of the buildings (oh, yes, I remember taking a picture of that building to show everyone Americanization ... and that's where the statue of Hans Christian Andersen is, though I can't see him just now behind the construction wall....)

When I was in Germany, the exchange rate was about 1.6 DM to $1. Over here it's 5kroner to $1 and it takes some real mental effort to tell myself, "No, it does not cost 24DM=$18 to ride the bus, only 24K=$4.80. ... No, you did not just spend 100DM=$60 for food, only 100K=$20...." and on and on.

Getting around in Denmark is quite easy because just about anyone I bump into speaks English quite well and they are rarely shocked when someone walks up to them and starts speaking in English. A lot of the signs are in English too.

My advisor, boss, co-author, mentor, and friend Per warned me that the hotel rooms at the CabInn really are cabins and quite small. I'm impressed someone of his height can sleep on the bed, myself. The room is just a smidgen larger than my old dorm room, but is smaller than the double rooms. There is a second bunk that can be folded up against the wall and that's how two people could share the room. While there's always hotel-culture shock for me, I remind myself that this is closer to par for the course in Europe.

My room's bathroom is something else. Imagine you are standing in a small bathtub. To your immediate right is the showerhead. To your immediate left is the toilet. In front of you is the sink. Take one step and you've either run into something or you're out of the room. There's a curtain you can use to wrap around yourself and close off the toilet from the shower. I decided to move the toilet paper out of the room to make sure it didn't get soaked. In its defense, the shower was wonderful - excellent water pressure.

I wandered down the road after a nap to a local grocery store for lunch and dinner fixings. It being Sunday (and my naturally frugal nature) I dislike the thought of wandering into various the cafes and spending 80-100 ... (not dollars, kroner) for a bit to eat. At least with a grocer I won't have to bother anyone for dinner. So now I have my usual German feed: full kernel bread (which my still-growing kidney stones don't like so much, but they'll just have to tough it out for a day. They didn't seem to mind on my mission.), with cucumber, "Bondehus" cheese, and frikadella open faced sandwich, plus bananas, carrots, and juice. Bondehus apparently translates as cottage or farm, but it's not cottage cheese like we know it: it's hard and low fat.

For the record, the Danes and other Germans never take kindly to my reminiscing about my time in the former East Germany. Germans are none to popular anyway, much less east Germans. Last time here when I fondly recalled how many things reminded me of my time there, a west German made it clear that it was a distressing comparison. Of course, since all I knew at the time was east Germany, that's all I could compare it to. By now I've visited a fairly large swath of west-central Europe (Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Finland) and can differentiate a bit better between common Europa, typical German (typisch Deutsch), and distinctly Ossie (east German).

Who will we be?

2011-03-31T16:41:00.001-04:00

For a moment walking out the door, I reveled in my geekdom and wondered who Hyrum will want to role play in the future and what roles he will ask of us.... Will I be Sam, Aragorn, or Gandalf to his Frodo? Han, Obi-wan, or 3P0 to his Luke? Which of the Justice League or the X-Men or Starfleet officers will we be? ... or should I be working on my rim shot instead?

Life Lessons:

2011-03-28T15:17:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks we've been teaching Hyrum about the priesthood and priesthood keys and how he'll get the priesthood some day and good things like that. I got a small payoff from that yesterday.

You see, when Hy is not quite on our schedule, we'll start counting. We are very lucky to have a boy who responds quickly to numbers. 1 ... "Stop counting! Daddy don't count!" he cries as he runs to do our fiendish bidding. (You'd think we believed in corporeal punishment instead of asking him to sit still for 3 minutes or carrying him to the car instead of letting him walk.)

Being a three year old and the son of people who try to not make any rules they don't follow too, he decided it was his turn to start counting at Mommy. He doesn't like practicing potty or changing clothes by himself, so he calls for us to come visit. Yesterday he called from the bathroom, "Mommy! Come here! 1 2 3."

Daddy's eyes got very wide and Mommy, seeing that, realized what had just happened. She laughed, but very quietly so as not to encourage him. Daddy was less pleased and went in to have a Word.

I tried several ways of explaining the situation, but didn't seem to quite be getting through. Then I remembered the keys. "Son, you do not have the keys to discipline your mother." I also explained that God does, that He holds Mommy and Daddy accountable for how we act as parents, and that if He counts 1, 2, 3 we had better listen. That got his attention.

He understood.

He understood well enough to tell Mommy this morning that he doesn't count at us, but God does.

Our rising star

2011-03-27T16:27:00.001-04:00

Hyrum got a second star for the first time on Disney SingIt, singing "You've Got a Friend in Me" and then "You Can Fly" and he barely missed two stars on "Time of Your Life." So it's not just me saying it, his singing skills are objectively improving.

Hyrum singing into the microphone was from six months ago, but its the same game.

2,123 days later...

2011-03-20T22:47:00.001-04:00

... and we still love being married. Especially me. I love being married.

Joy is
my support,
my most understanding friend,
my co-conspirator,
the amazingly wonderful mother of my son,
my sleeping pill, [no, seriously, I'm very thankful for this!]
my counselor,
my sunshine,
my hope,
my peace,
my joy.

Joy makes me bread and oatmeal cookies just about every week, all just for me. She always makes sure I have time for my calling and scripture study, and keeps me accountable for my home teaching. She keeps our home a safe haven. She encourages me to reach higher and helps me become the man I want to be. While she sometimes redirects me and adds counsel to my goals, she is unfailingly supportive.

Hyrum adores his mother. He may not always listen to her and he's not always very soft with her, but he loves her and wants to be her friend. Almost everything I love about my son I owe to my eternal companion. Without her patience and unending dedication, he would not be where he is today.

Joy has been keeping up with her continuing education credits to renew her certification as a counselor. Even six months pregnant, she has a strong desire to follow Pres. Kimball's advice and learn how to grow more vegetables for our family (coming soon to some food storage cans near us!). She maintains the highest standards of cleanliness in what she watches, reads, and listens to. She loves the Sabbath day and keeps it holy like nobody I know.

I had planned on writing more, but I seem to be out of time tonight. So when you read this while I'm in DC, know I love you, Friendly Friend.

Please recommend a good MP3 player

2011-03-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

I have some of the worst luck with MP3 players so far. I got a Fuze last year and it stopped working within two weeks. I returned it and got a Fuze+. It stopped working after 3 days. A couple weeks ago I got a Coby. It skips tracks 30 seconds into the song. Now it's going back and I'm going back to the drawing board.

So can anyone recommend an MP3 player that actually works?? I don't want an Apple product. I only need something to hold a lot of music while I exercise. I would like the ability to organize my music, but that doesn't seem to be an option anywhere.

Who is this boy now?

2011-03-20T15:56:00.003-04:00

Hyrum has added quite a cast of characters to his list of acting credits. He takes on several roles every day now, announcing rapid fire who everyone is and insisting that we call him by his new name every time we speak to him. Also new this week, he announces "I am Hyrum for a minute" when it's time to change his diaper, and then he reverts to his alternate persona when he stands up again.

We were very interested during our parent-teacher conference to learn that, though he'll talk about these people and pretending to be them, he only ever goes by Hyrum in the classroom. If he decides to playact with you, it's apparently an honor.

Some of the newer roles I didn't mention in the last post:

Hyrum -- Daddy -- Mommy -- (source)
Pablo -- Tyrone* -- Uniqua -- (Backyardigans)
Tyler -- Aubrey -- Jacey -- (kids in his class who hugged him for his birthday)
Margaret -- [her dad] -- [her mom] -- (friend at church)
Sister McCallister -- just Daddy -- Sister McCallister's Mom* -- (nursery leader)
Kermit the Frog -- TBA -- TBA -- (Muppets)
Joseph Smith Sr. -- Joseph Jr. -- Oliver Cowdery -- (church history)
Rolf -- Capt. von Trapp -- Lisl -- (Sound of Music)
Flick -- Dot -- Princess Ada -- (A Bug's Life)
Buzzz -- Tom Nook -- "the cat in the dark" -- (Animal Crossing)
Buzz Lightyear -- Rex -- Woody -- (Toy Story)

He's also doing more announcing who he will be on a certain day or under particular conditions:

"If Mommy wakes me up, I will be Kermit the Frog."
What if I wake you up?
"I'm Buzzz and you're Tom Nook."

His birthday card was signed by all of us!

*Incidentally, I had to fight to get the Tryone role. He was casting me as Uniqua and Mommy as Tyrone. It took part of my cunning and all of my persistence to convince him to switch us. I get enough female roles as is. I was a touch concerned when he wanted me to be Mary Poppins until we were watching it together. We saw "Feed the Birds" and then "Let's go Fly a Kite." During the latter song, Mary looks out the window as the children go skipping off, her face full of love and longing. It was at that moment that he happily pointed and called out "That's you, Daddy!" ... Okay, I'll be your Mary Poppins.

*Also incidentally, he's never met Sister McCallister's Mom, but he assumes she must have one. Further incidentally, he has a really hard time saying Flick's name properly, so if you overheard him, no, he's not cursing at us.

Good eats

2011-03-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I longed to know what it was that made some foods palatable for my son while all others were terrible. I looked forward to a time when he would have the language skills to tell me what was important to him.

Well, Moses is finally down from Sinai with the Word of the Hyrum: "Is it warm? Is it soft?"

Those are the two questions he asks us as we try to ply him with new foods. Are they warm and are they soft? The other day he even looked at Joy's food, asked if it was warm and soft, and took a bite so he could get his Hershey's chocolate square (which is replacing sugar cookies).

The thing is, that can't be all of it. We've introduced him to a lot of foods now that are warm and soft, but he doesn't eat most of them without some pressuring or wheedling. Peaches and yogurt are cold, not warm. Chocolate is not soft and chunky peanut butter isn't either. So this isn't a complete explanation.

Technology and Toddlers

2011-03-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

This ... is a phone. This has been the international symbol for "phone," "call me," and teaching your children proper telephone etiquette for generations. It makes good sense. You've got an ear piece and a mouth piece and you teach your kids not to confuse the two. Would you stick your pinky in your ear and talk to your thumb? Of course not!

This is a phone.

"Nyuh-uh, Daddy. This is a phone. Phones are flat. You play games on them. Hold your hand like this and talk into your palm. Why would you talk into your fingers anyway?"

Well, you've got the basic idea anyway. Thanks for calling, son.

Translation: Hyrum talked to the hand for the first time this week. His first call was to his daddy. :)

Proud of my son

2011-03-15T21:51:00.002-04:00

"Daddy, what's that?"
That's a map of the United States of America.
"and to the Republic for which it stands..."

with a good deal of garbling, he got through the entire pledge. Go, Hyrum! Go public school system that recites the pledge first thing every morning!

Happy Happy Birthday

2011-03-13T22:43:00.000-04:00

Hyrum is now as old as everyone thinks he is: 3.

"He's very happy to be three," Joy agrees. "He already updated the song from 'I am two going on three' to 'I am three going on four' without prompting. He did suggest today that he was four, just to see what reaction he would get. No no, you're not 4."

The plan was for me to return from Nebraska Thursday night, wake him up Friday, and take him to school. I would get home from work early so we could have birthday fun. Then La Guardia airport got inundated with rain, flights were arriving two hours late, and I was cordially invited to have a sleepover. The hardest part of it was knowing I would miss Hyrum's wake up call.

"Speaking of wake up call, I go into his room singing Happy Birthday. And throughout the whole song he's saying 'Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!' Nonplussed, I keep singing. I made my explanations after the song was over. I told him that Daddy was supposed to be here cause his plane was going to come in the night before but that his plane got stuck. So now there was a New Plan! And I told him we would pick Daddy up right after school. Somehow he seemed to be happy about having a new plan and that Daddy still wasn't going to miss his birthday."

His fellow classmates celebrated with Joy's cupcakes, gave Hyrum a few cards, and some even gave him hugs. This was very exciting for him. He is making friends who he comes home to talk about.

"They've tried to give him hugs before, but I think because he was seeking for attention for his birthday he was more accepting of the attention, and more thrilled by it."

Once they picked me up, we went to a park, at his spur of the moment request. The park is surrounded by feet of snow. I managed to get his snow pants on over his boots in the car and we trudged over to the slide and jungle gym. He was very happy traipsing around on it with me. Then we finished going home to have lunch and put him down for a nap. Cruel parents.

Hy napped, Daddy finished some work and napped (first sleep that day - 20 minutes) while Mommy finished preparations for the party and planned with her poor addled husband.

"The night before I put up streamers and balloons in green and red (Mario and Luigi colors), a small table with presents, and decorated the bottom half of three doors in our house with Mario pictures and Happy Birthday signs." Balloons dangled from the streamers so Hyrum could play kitty cat and bat them around. "Like at my birthday!" I DID do that, didn't I?

"He changes what he wants to do and be so often, and said he wanted to be Flick (Bug's Life) and Animal Crossing, and I was like, I'm not decorating with Animal Crossing - I wouldn't even know what to do! But one day Hyrum was kind of playing around and I was looking around online for pictures of Mario and Luigi and Peach and Hyrum started paying attention, so he was telling me what pictures he liked the best. So the decorations on the doors came from printing off those pictures."

"I was not disappointed in how excited he was about the decorations. I mean, he was really excited, a lot more excited about the decorations than I took time to do them, so I was not disappointed. He was still gushing about them when Daddy came home. When he saw the first door in the morning, he was all excited and he said 'Where's Toad?' I said, He's not on this door. We'll have to look at another door."

Sorry, Mario, your decoration is not in this castle....

"So it became a little bit of a treasure hunt to find out who was on each door. It was fun. And the last thing that he noticed (cause he really liked the streamers and balloons) was the helium balloon that I got him with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. He thought that was awesome too."

Once he woke up, it was time for presents!

I got him a plush Luigi doll to match his Mario, which brought squeals of delight once he got through Joy's wrapping job. Joy got him a game Cranium Cariboo he loved/s. We both got him some magnetic stickers of Toy Story and Bob the Builder. Then it was time for the party!

We had Hyrum choose the boardgames he wanted to play in advance. We dressed him in a red shirt and blue pants, and Joy had sewn a red letter M onto a hat of mine. He was Mario! When Margaret showed up, all pretty in pink to be crowned Princess Peach, and I donned green and blue, we were ready for some real fun.

"I was the only one not in character."

While Joy directed the kids in playing Candyland, Hi Ho Cherry-o, and Book of Mormon Challenge, I cleaned dishes and otherwise made my green self useful. One of the cuter parts is that in the BoM Challenge game you are supposed to sing a hymn at a certain point. When we did, Margaret stood up to twirl, saying 'Let's dance!' Hy watched her for a second and followed suit, less gracefully. That's what ballet classes'll do ya. Then it was time for cake!

"I made Hyrum a castle out of Moosewood vegan chocolate cake [same recipe as the cupcakes], chocolate coins, Mario fruit snacks, and dots to serve as Mario's pipes. They both seemed to think it looked like a castle, so that's good."

M was mostly interested in eating coins, Hy in eating the castle with his hands. So the ice cream slowly melted, he objected whenever I cut one of the adults a slice, and they had a blast! She gave him a couple children's magazines for a present and then they played a few minutes of MarioParty before returning her home. Not that either of them ate dinner as a result. Sorry, parents.

"We hadn't planned on subjecting her to MarioParty. But we were all still together and it was time to let Hyrum play with his Mario friend and she didn't seem to mind."

Looking over the decorations, she saw Princess Daisy and took a liking to her. She wondered why the game didn't have Princess Daisy too?? "Hyrum just usually chooses Peach. So if we ever play it again together, she'll probably choose Princess Daisy."

Once that was done, Hyrum got to talk to Pop and Boo online, who had sent him more presents. He managed to divine the Big Gift to open first: a plush Peach. He is so over-the-top thrilled about having Peach to go with the plumbers. He talks about Mario and Peach mostly. "Plastic Luigi has gone to the wayside" though he did talk to me about 'the other Luigi' today, asking where he was. They also got him a new white shirt, which he happily declared today didn't hurt him because it was big enough,

"and looked good on him. It had a great green, black and white striped tie."

He also got Toy Story Mania, which he was over-the-top thrilled about and two videos he didn't know much about... until I introduced them to him properly. They were clearly my additions to his wish list. The Backyardigans: Robin Hood the Clean became an instant favorite. He has spent most of the last 24 hours as Pablo the Penguin (when he wasn't being Flick, Margaret, or his nursery leader 'with the orange shoes and colored legs'). He has not yet been introduced to the Sesame Street counting and alphabet videos, but I have no doubt of their favorable reception.

"Boy, Backyardigans sure took off fast. They just have music often enough that the poor boy couldn't help himself, I'm sure."

That night his prayers were very thankful and happy, unable to even contain so much happiness in his little growing body. I asked him how his birthday was. He reported that it was great: 'There were presents!'

"There were a couple times during the day that he said things were 'beautiful' and 'fun.'" Yes, he was eager to express his approval of the decorations and cake and everything Joy had worked on so diligently while I was unavailable to do anything. Joy is to be highly commended for a most successful birthday.

Hyrum's Top Ten - Feb/Mar

2011-03-13T15:44:00.000-04:00

Can you notice the most common theme?

1 - Maria's Wedding Processional (Sound of Music) - 66
2 - Super Mario Theme - 48
3 - How do you solve a problem like Maria - 29
4 - Sixteen Going on Seventeen - 27
5 - Bob the Builder - 26
6 - High on the Mountain Top - 24
7 - A-Hunting we will go - 21
Brave Boy, Jump Up
A Bug's Life Suite
10 - WALL-E "Define Dancing" - 20

And, surprise and shock, Tarantara is not only not on the top ten, it's only barely on the top 20.

Splashing around a bit

2011-03-11T01:24:00.000-05:00

In one of my favorite comic strip punchlines, grandpa says defensively "I don't wallow in self-pity... I just stick my feet in and splash around a bit."

A friend commented on FB that he wants to fly. I agree. I want to fly. I want to finish flying home and be there when my son wakes up and it's his birthday. I don't much want to be alternating between sitting on the radiator or the floor of the La Guardia ticketing terminal waiting for the next flight after the rain canceled so many flights tonight. I want to be home like I promised I would be.

Instead, I'll get the pleasure of reenacting my triumphal return from Denver in January when Hyrum came to pick me up from the airport and I got to watch his face erupt into uncontrollable joy to see his friend Luigi home. It will have to do.

Happy birthday, son. I'll be home soon.

LDS Symposium on the Bible

2011-03-06T20:37:00.000-05:00

An annual religious symposium at Brigham Young University focused on the reverence Mormons show for the Bible, and the King James Version (KJV) in particular which turns 400 this year. Three of the talks referenced by the Church News stood out to me.

Prof/Brother/Mr. Millet discussed the issue of errors in transmission of the Bible:

"The question is not whether there have been scribal errors through the centuries; there have been," he said. "The question is not whether the Bible is the word of God; it is. The question is not whether the Bible can be relied upon with confidence if, in fact, there have been errors in the text; it can."
He said, "We do not believe the Bible must be translated perfectly to be spiritually normative and eternally valuable. ... For that matter, while we accept the Book of Mormon [and other LDS cannon] as holy scripture, we would not rush to proclaim their inerrancy. The marvel is the greater that an infinite and perfect God can work through finite and imperfect humans to deliver His word to His children."...
"Clearly, many factors impacted the prophetic message: personality, experience, vocabulary, literary talent," Brother Millet remarked. "The word of the Lord as spoken through Isaiah is quite different from the word of the Lord as spoken through Luke, and both are different from that written by Jeremiah or Mark. ... The LDS concern with the ancients is not the perfection with which such messages were recorded, but with the inspiration behind the message. ...
"In other words, knowing that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and the fact that He spoke to them at all, however well or poorly it may have been recorded, attests that He can speak to men and women in the here and now. After all, the Bible is only black ink on white paper until the Spirit of God illuminates its true meaning to us."

Prof/Bro/Mr Belnap discusses the use of King James language and prose in the Book of Mormon. Other cultures and languages do not use the KJV but because the Book of Mormon was written using KJV cadence, syntax, vocabulary, and often quotations (though several witnesses attest Joseph Smith never had a copy of the Bible with him while translating) the language of the KJV becomes the Church standard throughout the world. He also talked about Nephi's vision of the Bible in America and the probability that it was the KJV specifically to which he referred. The article closes with his suggestion that one reason the KJV was popular with the colonists was that, unlike the Geneva Bible that preceded it, it did not contain numerous annotations telling people what they were supposed to think about each verse, leaving them free to independent study and prayer.

Prof/Bro/Mr Tanner provides evidence that the KJV was written specifically in order to sound authoritative and scriptural, to have an ancient veneer about it, and was translated in part with its aural qualities in mind. The KJV was deliberately assigned to become the official church Bible of the time, to be read from the pulpit and give added authority to the preacher. While he points this out as a contrast with the Tyndale Bible which was intended for personal study, the KJV translators retained such enormous portions of the Tyndale translation (~90%) that it would be easy to overstate the contrast.

Things Hyrum Thinks About

2011-03-06T17:24:00.000-05:00

Hyrum prefers Toy Story 2 to Toy Story 3. The reason? "The kids are mean to the toys. In Toy Story 2, they aren't." Thanks to an early birthday present, he is discovering Toy Story 1 "how they meet."

"Now talk about the Buzz mission." The intro to Toy Story 2 is very much his favorite part.

-----------

One of Hyrum's favorite books at school is about a mouse named Murray who wants to make a perfect soup. To get the ingredients, he runs around doing favors for people in a barter system economy. "Murray is in a hurry" is the catch phrase. Hy announced on Wednesday that today he would be Murray. On Friday, he asked when it was Sunday so he could be Murray. I came in his room today and asked him what day it was. He exulted: "Sunday!!! That means I am Murray!"

-------------

Last week Hyrum discovered Animal Crossing. His character in the game is named Buzzz. He specified to us every day that he was "Buzzz from Animal Crossing" as opposed to Buzz from Toy Story. I get to play Tom Nook the raccoon storekeeper whose voice I do as an Indian accent. The number one thing he talks about, though, is that fact that the opening screen is "Dark" and has "a cat." "And then the light goes on and you walk until you stop. You go in the house and tell .... and you go in the store and work for Tom Nook."

"Marioparty has a question mark!" he interjects from the dinner table.

When Mommy reminded him that he doesn't work for Nook forever, I told her he and I had finished Nook's chores. Hyrum then explained, "You walk out of the store and you win!" Buzzz punched the air to celebrate paying off the downpayment on his house. "And then we save."

---------------

Last Sunday Hyrum decided to be his friend Margaret. This was very funny because I home teach Margaret's family. So we all went over to Margaret's with our Margaret. She sat in my lap and he sat in her dad's lap and was overly affectionate. When we got home, I got to be Margaret's daddy and Joy was Margaret's mommy. We have spent this week trying to convince him that most people only get handshakes and hugs. So I ask permission to stop being Nook so Daddy can give him a kiss. The odd side effect is that he has wandered to me and asked to shake my hand. He is very looking forward to playing with Margaret this week for his birthday.

--------------

"Mommy, what's my name?"
Fred
"Nooo!"
What is your name?
"I'm Murray."

--------------

Hyrum would also like me to blog about his time outs and being sent to his room. I'll pass. He's a good kid.

* Joy's disclaimers: We have decided it would be best this year to have only one person over for Hyrum's birthday. So if you know us and you were invited last year, we're sorry. We asked Hyrum to choose only one person, and since Margaret is very popular right now, he chose her. We love you and wish we could have more people over.

Random comments on accents

2011-02-27T21:16:00.001-05:00

My theater training never included Italian accents. My son, however, likes asking me to "talk like Luigi." So I've spent a lot of time lately working on an accent I've never studied. At first my attempts sounded like most pretty pitiful versions of an Italian accent with which you're probably familiar - stick an -a at the enda of randoma words anda see what happens.

While shoveling the snow today, I realized I had learned something about the accent from trying it. The -a doesn't go after random words, but serves to separate two words that would otherwise be joined by consonants. In my example above, the -a between "end of" doesn't help the words flow, but "anda see" does, as would an -a between "what happens." Now because I'm making this up, I don't really know if it's "correct" but it feels sensible. It could also be a matter of rise and flow, or only going after certain consonants because those letters don't end words in Italian, or some other possibility.

One of the ways Hyrum is mildly entertaining is that he thinks all English dialects are "Mary Poppins." He really doesn't care if I sound like Bert or Monty Python or Hermione or Ringo, they're all Mary.

And on the subject, I'll just mention that I have a terrible time doing a German accent. This is funny since I speak German and taught English to Germans, so I've heard a lot of it. The first problem is that the harsh-sounding stereotypical German accent doesn't sound like the attempt of anyone I knew in Germany to speak English. The second problem is that to do it right, I have to think in German and then translate it back into English and it gets mighty complicated to keep up. The best I can do these days is imitate Pres. Uchtdorf, but he speaks with a much clearer English than most Germans would so his voice doesn't scream "Kraut" the way someone on Hogan's Heroes would. Thankfully, Hyrum doesn't want to play act anyone German yet, so I don't have to worry about it.

Learning to write

2011-02-24T22:58:00.000-05:00

Hyrum got a toy with multiple uses, one of which is a stencil set for the numbers and letters. Joy noticed that when they stenciled the letters, she would have to hold his hand to help him connect the dots to reform the letters. When it was the numbers, though, he'll do it himself without any help.

They Grow So Fast

2011-02-20T22:29:00.000-05:00

Lavinia is about the size of a carrot, they tell us. And growing rapidly.

Hyrum is now taller than the television on its stand. Not quite three years old, we are moving him up into size 4 and 4T shirts (still size 3 pants). After months of no weight change, he's gained about 2 pounds in a month. In percentage terms, that's the equivalent of me gaining 15 pounds in four weeks. It's growth spurts all the way with this one.

Looking Forward to Lavinia

2011-02-20T22:11:00.001-05:00

Joy: "We are still having a girl! Yeah. We are now 21 weeks along and we think that poor Lavinia has had very little press on this news feed. Derrill felt her kick for the first time last night. Joy started feeling her kick or punch about February 9 (some undetermined stuff before), but has felt her most days since then. The funny part of that was the nurse had just been asking me earlier that week if I was feeling her move yet and I said well not really. I had thought that movement or fluttering by my ribs was the baby earlier and then found out that my uterus wasn't even close to my ribs. So, I chuckled and decided I wasn't really feeling her yet."

D: In all our ultrasounds, she has been a Mover and a Shaker. She squirms, she cartwheels, she spins.

"She nearly makes our doctor swear."

She certainly makes it difficult for him to keep an accurate heartbeat feed. Hyrum, by contrast, was a modest baby, hiding his head from the camera and crossing his legs. Joy could count Hyrum's 10 movements in the morning, but he didn't make much noise otherwise. "Maybe hiccups." I think she'll get to 10 movements daily for Lavinia any time now.

HISTORY OF LAVINIA'S NAME:
Back in the paleolithic era of our marriage, when infants did not rule the earth, "our first attempt at a pregnancy was a short-lived one." The miscarriage helped us get prepared to become parents eventually, changed our outlook on life, and was otherwise a very traumatic experience. Even though it occurred at such an early age, we had felt a real connection with our little embryo and felt that we were expecting a little girl.

"We felt close to her and had prayerfully chosen a name for her: Lavinia Thalia Watson."

This made losing her all the more tragic.

"When I suggested Lavinia, it was because I really felt that she was close to my great-grandmother Lavinia in Heaven."

I wanted to name her after Joy, but Joy was just as adamantly against a child named after herself as she is about a child named after me. So I made up a word. The word I made up was Thalia (TAY-leah). I thought it sounded nice. I later went to a baby name website and discovered that the name was Hebraic for ... Joy. I felt inspired. :?D

"And we just think the two names go best together with Lavinia first.

"When we found out we were expecting this time, I tried really hard to tell myself that I would be equally happy for a boy or a girl. When someone would say 'I think it's a girl,' I would say, 'I dunno. It's probably a boy.' And vice versa, trying to keep my heart open to all the possibilities, knowing there are only two."

When we were pregnant with Hyrum, we were ready with a girl's name, but not a boy's. We had some joke names lying about -- Sassafras was our code name for our first male child, Tinuviel (of Tolkeinian invention) our first girl, and Luigi if there were another boy out there somewhere. We returned home from our Hyrum ultrasound and warned him: 'Your name as of now is Sassafras. If you want something better, you'd better tell us who you are.' After much deliberation, the two names we settled on were surprisingly the first two we wrote down: Hyrum Spencer. This time we were better prepared. Lavinia Thalia if a girl, John Thomas Lazenby Watson if a boy. So now it's John (or John-Thomas or J.T. or whoknows) who has a name in waiting. Given Hyrum's penchants for Mario and Luigi, the code name just doesn't work anymore. But back to Lavinia.

EVERY PREGNANCY IS DIFFERENT

"Preparing for a second child is really different, for me at least ... maybe it's because I'm not a multi-tasker. I have a really hard time focusing on preparing for this child to come. In my first pregnancy, that's almost all I could think about."

Her body is certainly reacting differently. More aches and pains, less volatile mood swings but more of them...

"Really? I don't remember that. ... It's one of those things that helps women prepare to get pregnant again *chuckle*"

Last time Joy had to eat first thing every day and lived with soda crackers or nuts by the head of her bed. She couldn't eat meat. This time, she needs to graze (eat regularly) but doesn't have to eat immediately and she can have meat. For a couple months, she couldn't stand the smell of my eggs cooking, but now she's enjoying them again.

"My first trimester I had to eat pretty early in the morning. I really have to sleep a lot, but Derrill says that's not different. But when I fit it in, it's different, I'm sure, especially since Hyrum has been home sick from preschool. But having him gone lots of mornings helps me get a lot of the rest I need."

Neither one has induced morning sickness. Hyrum gave her a worse time with her allergies, but then she's been on allergy shots ever since and presumably they have helped.

"I get them once a week."

The trial du jour is her circulation. Babies tend to create and exacerbate very-close veins. This time around, the good doctor has recommended a prescription -- a Prescription!!! -- for a pair of tights. Tights. a Prescription! for Tights! Hose! What??? She had to go to the store and get MEASURED for HOSE. What???!??

"They don't even carry them. They have to order them in from an ortho-something, they give out the braces for legs and stuff. I'm just lucky there's one in Ithaca. My doctor only knew about Elmira and Corning. I found out about the Ithaca one when I told the lady in Elmira 'I live an hour away and you want me to come get measured??' I thought I would just go pick them up, like you do with normal prescriptions."

"I also bought a pregnancy belt to help with my lower abdominal and upper abdominal difficulties I'm having right now that I didn't have with my first pregnancy. So we'll see how hot I get in the summer with all the extra stuff."

Thankfully, summer doesn't get difficult around here until mid-July and Lavinia will be here and suntanned by then.

*sarcastic* "Yeah, with how much I like to go outside... No, I did like it before I had kids."

"The one thing I have done to get ready for Lavinia (besides getting the house more organized) was buy a couple of pretty dresses when I went to buy Hyrum some boots. Hyrum got the boots, but I found some really pretty, red, velvety dresses - two different sizes - and a pair of white pants to go under them. I want my daughter to be modest. None of those just underweary things that match the dress for her!"

So we're looking forward to our long-lost Lavinia joining our family. We are very happy.
"So now I'm still trying to convince myself that we're having a girl. But I'm really happy about it."

A Sleeping Trauma Averted

2011-02-19T23:57:00.001-05:00

I was surprised to learn that one of our most visited posts was about the brief time when Hy had a really hard time sleeping at night. We had another episode of that this year, and for very similar reasons, but we came to a similarly happy outcome by totally different methods. The plus side of our old method of taking away access to all his toys and books at night is that Hyrum's room is guaranteed to be clean every night and has been for six months now.

For the last several months, Hyrum has been going to bed with his giant Mickey doll taking up the other half of his bed. If Mickey isn't there, he asks for him. Then he got a plush Mario for Christmas, who also needed to be in the bed. He slept soundly and woke every morning to talk to Mario (instead of Buzz, whose picture had been his morning companion).

Then a few weeks ago we got him a small, hard plastic Luigi toy with some overly-leftover birthday money. Yeah, 10-11 months leftover. I think I've mentioned how ecstatic he is to have both of them together.

It also meant that the first night he slept VERY poorly. He woke up every couple hours, waking Joy up (who has forgotten to wake me up when that happens so I can take care of him). He was sick already and not doing well to begin with. This made the next day much worse.

Joy and I had a family council. She was all for following up with what we do with books: Luigi can't sleep with him. He fell asleep just fine when it was just Mario. Maybe it's just Luigi, or maybe it's the two of them together, who knows? Luigi has to go. I persuaded her that Hyrum can communicate now and he understands consequences much better than he did last year. Let's see if we can invite him into the counseling process and find a solution we all like. She and I came up with two options for him:

1) Every night he could choose to sleep with either Mario or Luigi. If he didn't sleep that night, he would get neither the next night and be able to choose again each night after that.

2) He could sleep with both of them tonight, but if he didn't sleep well then Luigi would never sleep with him again.

We discussed the problem with him and presented the choices. He chose door number 2, just as Joy predicted. That night we reminded Hyrum of what the choice meant and its consequences. He repeated them to me several times: "If I don't sleep, no more Luigi." That fear alone was probably enough to keep him awake all night. Except it didn't. He slept beautifully and continued to sleep beautifully most nights since (excepting when the cough he's had the last week woke him and Joy up).

So the books and toys still stay out of his room at night, but Luigi can stay.

A Theory of Growing Old

2011-02-15T12:14:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to get old. *pause for laughter*

A couple months ago I slammed the car trunk on my finger. It hurt, it bled, it freaked out a few shoppers at the nearby store where they searched for gauze, it still shows up as a little bit of black on the tip of my finger. I drove us home through the snow for an hour with a large finger held awkwardly for all of New York to see and mistake for its neighboring finger being waved at them. Ouch.

One day last week I watched as Joy closed the trunk to the car. I thought it looked like her hand was a little too close to the trunk ... yes, the hand she was using to close the trunk, that one was a little close to the trunk. I panicked. I very nearly ran out to her to grab her hand away, or at least yell out a cautionary "Don't close the car trunk on your hand!"

It's like I forgot my wife was an intelligent person. It's like I forgot that, if she does have a fault, lack of a self-preservation instinct is not it.

And I suddenly understood why "old" people were always unnecessarily warning me not to be the biggest idiot who ever walked the earth. They got hurt. They knew a guy who got hurt. Suddenly they're looking out for everybody else out of instinct because it could happen to anybody, anytime, anywhere. When you get to "our" age, after all, things don't heal like they used to.

I would like to imagine that by noticing this unfortunate trend early on, I can apply enough mental Rogaine to stave off, or at least hide, this tendency. I know enough people, however, to believe that while my struggle may be worthwhile, it will likely turn out to be futile as well. Hyrum, Lavinia ... I'm sorry. I know you're (will be) smarter than this,

But don't put your hand in the blender and turn it on.
Please don't run into light sockets with liquid scissors.
Stop trying to stick your elbow in your ear. Stop trying to lick your elbow too.
And whatever you do, DON'T push that big red button, okay?
And get off my lawn.

Hyrum's Top Ten: 2010

2011-02-13T19:48:00.002-05:00

Yes, the moment I'm sure you've ALL been waiting for: Hyrum's Top 10 of 2010, with some new favorites added for good measure. Life's been hectic and blogging scarce or I'd've done it sooner and only realized two weeks ago I hadn't yet. Anyway, here goes:

Top 10 of 2010 by Play Count                                     by Hours
Bob the Builder - 893                                    Tarantara - 35:38
Hallelujah Chorus (MoTab) - 524                   Chorus - 34:21
Tarantara - 450                                         Musicological Journey Through 12 Days of Christmas - 20:04
Praise the Man (Hoffman) - 228                     Pines of Rome - 16:55
76 Trombones - 211                                       Pomp and Circumstance - 15:13
Mickey Mouse Club March - 201               Bob the Builder - 14:38
Let's Go Fly a Kite - 182                                 Firebird - 13:31
The Little Drummer Boy - 176                        Praise the Man - 13:21
10 Little Indians - 149                                     Little Drummer Boy - 11:47
Feed the Birds - 146                                   76 Trombones - 10:47

So Hyrum (and we) spent nearly an entire day and a half last year listening to Tarantara and the Hallelujah Chorus. The amazing thing to me is that Joy still doesn't have either one memorized.

To kick off 2011 I got tired of counting up 800 of this and 100 of that and a top screen that never changed even though he hasn't really listened to some of those top 10 songs in months. So I copied any song he'd listened to more than 25 times to a flash drive, deleted them from the hard drive, and then put them back on again, resetting their counters at 0. I also added a lot more music to his playlist to see if I can induce some new favorites. His current favorites would still rise rapidly to the top and his top playlist for the last 6 months was in the car to give them all some help.

In the last two months then, here's how his new Top Ten is shaking out:
Hark All Ye Nations - 104
Bob the Builder - 100
Looky Look (VeggieTales) - 59
Watch Me Go (I'm a Happy Girl) - 55
Give a Little Whistle - 48
Sixteen Going on Seventeen - 42
Tarantara - 35
WALL-E Dancing - 33
All of Me - 28
Hallelujah Chorus - 28

Lots of new stuff! And the songs he really doesn't care about anymore are drifting slowly away into obscurity while his 2010 Top Three are still hanging out in the 2011 Top Ten.

Hyrum has LOVED The Sound of Music that he got for Christmas, particularly asking me to sing songs from it every night as I put him to bed. It used to be "Sound of Music" was the nightly request until I introduced him to "Consider Yourself" from Oliver!, and that's the current nightly request. Sixteen Going on Seventeen (or the bedtime version "you are 2 going on 3") and Maria's Wedding March are also highly sought after.

Hyrum's Stand Up Comedy Routine

2011-02-13T16:35:00.001-05:00

Hi there. Hy here.

So let's talk about underwear. Kids underwear is a marketing device. Now I'm okay with this. But they put the marketing on the backside of the underwear. What's up with that?

I want to see my marketing. But then my parents tell me I put my underwear on backwards. I can't see Buzz or Lightning McQueen or any of them on my back! Who came up with this?

Yesterday's Training

2011-02-13T14:02:00.000-05:00

For anyone who missed the Church's Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast, one of the summary articles is here and it links to summary articles for the other presentations. Both the new second Handbook and the entire training video is (or soon will be) available here.

Things Hyrum Notices

2011-02-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Hi there. Hy here to report on some of my exploits.

Mommy, I want to see the calendar. The calendar tells me when Pop is coming to visit. Pop comes in 4 days. Mommy, I'm Pop. You be Boo. Boo comes in July when the baby comes. I see Pop and Boo. When do Steve and Emilee come?

------

Daddy, no Christmas tree. Christmas tree is gone :( . (brightening) After Thanksgiving, have Christmas again.

------

There are two Luigis and two Marios. Daddy, you're one Luigi. Here is the other Luigi. Here is one Mario.
"Where's the other Mario, Hyrum?"
I am Mario! Two Marios, two Luigis.

------

I'm playing a memory game right now. I turn 12 cards upside down and start looking for matches. I turn over one card and then turn over other cards until I find its match.

There's two. Now where's three? I'm looking for three. Oh there it is! :) Number ... number ... number ... Look, Luigi! There's a match!

------

I don't go to Nursery today. I cough. We go get Furies, and Mommy go to choir. I go to clerk's office with Daddy. We have sacrament and go home. We have lunch, take nap, and go get Mommy.

All Too Easy

2011-02-12T23:16:00.000-05:00

I've been having a series of vivid, unsettling dreams this week. Last night's was particularly good and all too easy to understand and decipher.

I dreamed I was on LOST. I managed to escape the island, only to realize that with four other castaways and the pilot from the show on board, we were in trouble. We crashed. I woke up and saw the gray-haired face of Jen. She told me that I was back on the island and it had been ten years since I had tried to escape. I screamed and just rocked in a fetal position, sobbing in the dream.

Now to understand the dream, you need only know one thing: Jen came to Ithaca with me nine years ago.

And we're both ... still ... here.

Aaaaaaaaah! Get me outta here!

(Jen is not gray haired. She looked a bit like Katherine Janeway in the dream, which is also appropriately symbolic.)

(Pictured right: my office.)

I love school

2011-02-12T19:37:00.001-05:00

I love Hyrum's school in particular. Mrs. Downes and her assistants are miracle workers. For most of you, there is no need to rehash Hyrum's eating habits that have remained almost unchanged for 12 months. Yogurt, peaches, sometimes cheese and cookie dough -- these are the foods my son is made of. Occasional successes have been heralded and then fallen by the wayside: green beans, peas, peanut butter, bananas, applesauce, grapes ... Fad-like they come and just as quickly disappear again from his diet. His reactions to new foods ... but then I said there was no need to rehash.

Hyrum is eating new foods, and we are begging the teachers to tell us how this miracle is performed.

He eats rice at school - rice he has not eaten since he was 6 months old and it was a mush cereal.
Half a cup of noodles. He has never eaten noodles before in his life.
Mashed potatoes - he ate sweet potatoes as an 8 month old, never since.
They feed him food on graham crackers, which he shies away from and cries when we bring out - but he'll use it as a spoon for them.

Joy asked him the other day how many pinches of grated cheese wanted.
"10"
Okay, then you need to eat 5 spoonfuls of rice and green beans (mixed, but not mashed)
Chomp, chomp, chomp went the rice and green beans.
Yum, yum, yum, he got his cheese.

How many more pinches do you want?
"9"
Okay, and he ate another 5 spoonfuls of rice and green beans ...

Twice now he has asked us for a new food so he can eat another cookie half. He ASKED for cooked carrots, and ate cooked squash when we didn't have any. He ate lettuce for me today.

He has enough vocabulary finally to express some food preferences. He doesn't like crunchy. "Soft" is the key word. But he eats chunky peanut butter and hard chunks of chocolate and he doesn't like soft mashed potatoes. He has said "yummy" to some of his new foods. Not that he'll keep eating them, but he will agree 'yeah, yeah, Dad, it tastes great, now gimme my cookie.'

A marvelous work and a wonder. I love Hyrum's school. He likes it too.

Helping in the Vineyard

2011-02-11T16:30:00.000-05:00

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has given us a new way to serve and build up the kingdom. "Helping in the Vineyard" is currently a limited edition beta effort to crowd-source various tasks that will help the Church get the word out. More tasks will be added over time, I gather. At the moment you can (and I just did)

Upload and/or tag photos and videos
Proofread Church materials
Translate materials to/from a variety of languages
Help with family history

You sign in with your LDS Account (those of you in the Ithaca Ward, if you aren't set up yet, talk to me and I'll help you get set up) and select which jobs you are interested in and any foreign languages you speak. Any time you want, you can log in and it'll give you the next item they need help with.

I tagged a number of scenic pictures, mostly rocky, wave-crashing shorelines. I made sure that a number of paragraphs from the Ensign had been scanned properly, adjusted a Spanish language Primary manual's paging on using our talents, and proofread a German language lesson manual on revelation. I translated instructions for the new FamilySearch website into German.

The crowd-sourcing is a particularly good idea for the translating, and they have a good system set up. You can vote on the translations of your fellow helpers to help confirm that a particular translation is accurate or offer your own edition. Once a threshold number of positive votes are scored, the page is approved. There are helps available throughout of approved terms, similar phrases that have been translated elsewhere, and a Google translation to help you out. You can also sign in to be notified when changes have been made.

I recommend it as a nice way to get in a few minutes of service easily - particularly for my insomniacally-inclined friends and family. Matt 20: "The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest." Jacob 5: "Wherefore, go to, and call servants, that we may labor diligently with our might in the vineyard, that we may prepare the way, that I may bring forth again the natural fruit, which natural fruit is good and the most precious above all other fruit. ... the servant went and did as the Lord had commanded him, and brought other servants; and they were few. And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself against the time which will soon come."

Matched by Ally Condie - A Joy Post

2011-02-10T22:27:00.001-05:00

I am not usually a person that takes time to review books, but Matched is really excellent and I have to share how I feel about it. Ally I really love this book.

My favorite genera of books are romance books, but I am really picky. I will not read anything that is focused on physical intimacy, mystery, murder, or lacks a family focus. I am similarly picky about other media, but that is a different subject. I also don't really get into sci-fi. The book has to have a good plot and characters that grow and change. Many clean romance books have little of quality in them, but I love to find one that does.

Matched is a masterpiece. I have enjoyed some of Ally's books in the past, but I was transfixed for most of the book. It only took me a chapter or two to get into and I could hardly put it down. It has character development and a new world to explore. It has a tender love story that is built as all true love ought to be in tender moments and memories that are priceless to the individuals, but that no one else would see the same. Intimacy is so much more than physical and the relationship is alive with anticipations, and shared dreams and hopes and reality in a world where many have lost touch with what that means.

Matched is so well crafted I can't wait to read it again with my husband and I look forward to the sequel. I only wish I had started reading it when all three were already out. Waiting is hard. I have not been completely WOWed over a book in a long time. Great job Ally. I love it and I think that you are great too.

Family Home Evening this week

2011-02-08T18:43:00.003-05:00

I taught Hyrum about the counsel in Heaven today. He did not have good looks for Satan. Then we had put Satan in the forest and that is where he usually likes to put his little spirit person (I have told the part of the story in flannel about us living in heaven and being children of God previously) and he didn't want to put his spirit person in the forest with Satan. Good boy! We removed Satan from Heaven and Hyrum happily went about with his pretend heaven play. He is a great kid and was very willing to say that we should follow Jesus :D

Pop n Boo's Revenge

2011-02-06T20:58:00.001-05:00

When you grow up, I hope you have children Just ... Like ... You!

I have an undeserved reputation for being a "planner" at my parents' house. It all stems from the fact that I get hungry for dinner before Mom and Dad do. Left to their own devices, dinner happens around 7 or 8pm. I got accustomed to dinner at 5 or so at college. I quickly learned that the best way to get dinner happening when I wanted it was to go to Mom about 3pm and say, "So, Mom, what's the plan for dinner?" She would send me to Dad. (That gave me permission to invade his office, you see.) "So, Dad, what's the plan for dinner?" I maaaay have also sometimes asked them what the plan was more generally, trying to find out what they thought was happening that night and if there was any hope of gaming. Could be.

My parents, now Pop and Boo, came away from me asking that every day, all summer and every visit, thinking that I like to plan. Can't imagine why ;) . Joy is ever so much more of a planner than I am, though. The odd thing is that she likes to plan, but "isn't good at it" and I don't like to plan but I'm good at it -- I think mostly so I can get it done quickly. When we got together with my brother and his wife last year for our anniversaries [right] I discovered that they wanted a Real Plan, complete with time schedules of when we'd arrive at each attraction, compared to my Vague Notion of a Plan that said we'd get there when we get there and do the most important things first. Joy says, "I like Steve and Emie's idea of planning. I'm just not very successful at it. They made the trip much more enjoyable." So I think I'm a flexible guy.

WELL. Enter Hyrum and Joy.

Joy says to me, that she needs my help scheduling her time with Hyrum when he gets back from school. "He does well with structure." So we sat down two weeks ago Sunday night for and I helped her write a Real Schedule, with actual time lines and activities and Structure. She loves it. She lives it. It works. "I'm even becoming a little bit flexible with it."

"At snack time Thursday ... Snack time has become a time to talk about what is going to happen in the rest of our day or things about school.

Hyrum asked Joy if they could play with something. Joy told him, no, not yet. After snack time was Jesus time (when they would read his scriptures and watch a video) and after Jesus time was Hyrum Choose.

"So they he said: 'After choice time?'
"I said, 'After Hyrum Choose is Free Time, and you can play with xxxx then.'
"He said, 'After Free Time?'
"'Is dinner.'
"'After dinner?'
"Family fun time.
"'After family fun time?'
....

And they went on like that through SUNDAY! Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and through Church, he asked "After ....?" and Mommy told him. It was quite the little conversation. She commented at the time something to the effect of - Boy, no sooner do I get a schedule put together but he detects it and wants to know it!

Today we're in church. He asked to eat his lunch. I said no, not yet. It's time for the sacrament. You can eat lunch after the sacrament.
He said, 'After lunch?'
I anticipated: After lunch you go to nursery, and after nursery we drop off the Furies, and you go home and have snack time and a nap, then we have home teachers coming over and ....
He was happy.

"Oh, but you misinterepet. Because there's time between lunch and nursery when we're still in Sacrament meeting and..."
Yes, dear, I am still not the planner you are. I do not account for each minute.
"Yes, but he is expecting to go to nursery RIGHT after lunch, and it's been a problem."

So we have a literal son who cares about scheduling and a flexible Dad who helps schedule everyone else but wants to not have to go into detail and ....

The Curse Works!

More quotes (1)

2011-02-06T20:03:00.000-05:00

A few more quotes from Understanding the Book of Mormon. At some point in my reading, I realized I wasn't underling in my usual style, so I am going back through to catch some other things that struck my notice and marking some other parts for my own scripture study. Anything after this is either quoting Hardy or someone Hardy quotes:

The Book of Mormon should rank among the great achievements of American literature, but is has never been accorded the status it deserves, since Mormons deny Joseph Smith's authorship, and non-Mormons, dismissing the book as a fraud, have been more likely to ridicule than to read it.

-- Daniel Walker Howe

The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity. We ask him to believe in the sincerity and authenticity of this preface, affirming in return his prerogative to be skeptical of all that follows it.

-- John Barth in Giles Goat-boy

[The Book of Mormon] is basically is a tragedy. If there is any validity to the Talmud's observation that the phrase "it came to pass" signals impending trouble, we know that things will not turn out well in the Book of Mormon. ...

Although at times latter-day Saints want to speak of God as "the primary author of the Book of Mormon," clearly the Book of Mormon is not like the Qur'an, with God speaking in the first person (or even like Joseph's own revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, for that matter). Rather, the word of God is articulated by very human narrators who continually draw attention to the editorial choices they have made.

Hyrum moving on: All Growed Up

2011-02-04T08:22:00.000-05:00

Enough people have told me I left them hanging after the last edition that my decent respect for the opinions of mankind compels me to pen one last brief post.

The compromise worked splendidly. On his third day of school (Wed), I had worked out with him that his Mario doll would accompany him to and home from school if he could be happy. He kept a stiff upper lip with effort on Wednesday and then I left town for a conference early the next morning.

By the time I got back, things were peaceful and normal. He had decided to keep count of how many days he had attended school. Monday morning I came in, asked if he was ready to go to school, and he looked up from the bed and said, "Six." Yes, today will be your sixth day. Mommy convinced him to change the counting to just repeating the 5 days of school each week. But the next two weeks had only 4 and he lost count and interest somewhere along the way.

That Wednesday (day 8) was my turn to take him to school again since I had some morning errands to run also. He was happy in the car. We walked to the classroom. While standing in the closet area hanging up his coat, he said "Daddy, sit and talk with me."

So I sat and asked him what he wanted to talk about. No real answer to that. We talked about school and that he was a good boy. He stood up on his own and walked out to face the class. He started looking for a toy, then ran over to sit in the lap of one of the teacher's helpers. I waved goodbye to him and just barely got a response. He may even have needed prompting....

I left greatly stunned. He's all ready for college. Just like Cosby said: 'Kindergarten exists primarily to teach kids to be able to say goodbye to their parents without crying. After the second day, they got nothing for you.' After the emotion of my last drop off, it was discombobulatingly anti-climactic. All for the best, of course, ... but my little boy is growing up.

Not that he won't put up a fight about that, though. Last night the song "I'll Make a Man Out of You" came on, and we tried teaching Hyrum what it means that little Lavinia will be a girl. We asked who would become a man.

No, not mommy. Yes, Daddy will be a man. Who else? ... Hyrum will be a man!

"No! I'm just Hyrum."

This morning we read in the Book of Mormon about "raising up seed" which I translated as having children and helping them grow up.
Joy adds, "We will help you grow up to be a good man"
"No. I'm just Hyrum."
I try to compromise: Well, can we help you grow up to be a good boy, then?
"Yes. I'm a boy."
Joy: "Do you want to always be a boy, like Peter Pan?"
"Yes. I'm Hyrum."

I've taken him to school one other morning - he begs for me to take him about once a week and expects Peach/Mommy to do the honors otherwise. Then again he also asked to sit in my lap in the coat closet. He doesn't ask Joy that. It's part of the special father/son going-to-school thing. I like it. I like him.

Someone Else's Favorite Music

2011-02-04T08:02:00.000-05:00

We're in process of backing up this computer so we can wipe its memory *grumble grumble, Vista grumble Dell grumble 5th time grumble grumble*. And part of that means making sure I have CD copies of all the music I've bought online and finally burning some CDs I've been meaning to for a long time but never getting around to it ... like a CD of Weird Al favorites so I don't have to rip 7 CDs for a couple dozen songs.

So, let it be known that these are the songs going on Derrill's Favorite Weird Al Yankovic CD. Any recommendations on great songs I missed?

Weird Al was a very important part of surviving high school. He was a gateway drug to tolerating all sorts of modern music I otherwise couldn't stand -- except when it was being mocked. There is a lot of music I doubt I would enjoy today without that early exposure. He inspired my own parody writings, not least of which my last talent show entry. (I'm still looking for a video of that.) There was comfort in knowing that even though I was widely known among the jock community as "Crazy Derrill" I was in fun company. Like "Weird" Al, I am not on a first-adjective basis with anyone. He also served as a welcoming Shibboleth once I got to college: anyone who would publicly acknowledge him was probably fun and mostly harmless.

Top 5
Midnight Star
Buy Me a Condo
Ode to a Superhero
Ebay
Spam

Next 5
Your Horoscope for Today
Lasagna
Hardware Store
Theme from Rocky XIII
The Saga Begins

The rest in some semblance of an order

A Complicated Song
The White Stuff (in the middle of an Oreo)
(This Song's Just) Six Words Long
I Think I'm a Clone Now
I Love Rocky Road
Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch
One More Minute
Germs
Living in the Fridge
Yoda
I Lost on Jeopardy
Since You've Been Gone

Who is this girl?

2011-02-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

Wait ... did he just say a GIRL??

Yes. Yes, I did.

Lavinia Thalia Watson, coming late June.
(la-VIN-ee-ah TAY-lee-ah)
(Joy calls her Evie, I call her Thaly ... we'll see what she chooses)

We are ecstatic.

And may I say I am quite pleased with the picture quality on my old cellphone now that we are camera-less?

Who is this boy?

2011-01-31T15:29:00.000-05:00

When he came home from school, he announced to me that he is Handy Smurf. Mommy is Papa Smurf. After deliberation, I was dubbed Brainy.

When he woke up, he was Mario.

When he went to bed, he was his own grandfather ("I'm Pop"), while we were Matt and Mandy.

Over the weekend, he was his teacher and Mommy was one of her assistants.

Except when he decided it would be more interesting to be Captain Von Trapp to Mommy's Maria.

Sunday I taught him that if his name started with a C, he would be Chyrum. He thought that was funny. So then I added that if his name started with a T, he would be Thyrum. That wasn't as funny. For a few minutes, he was content to be just Hyrum.

The hard part is he keeps asking us literally every other sentence what our names are and he isn't even satisfied when we give him the right answer. Couple that with the three-year-old's tendancy to say No a lot. This got old last night, so I started being just as impossible:

"What's your name?"
Derrill
"No it's not!"
I'm not?
"No. You're not."
Okay, so my name is Not.
"No it's not!"
Yes, my name is Not.
"No, Daddy, it's ... your name is ..."
You are Hyrum. I am Derrill. She is Joy. You are Son. I am Daddy. She is Mommy.
"No no no no no! I'm Pop. You're Matt, Daddy. Mommy is Mandy."
Okay, so I'm the Matt-Daddy
"No. You're just Matt."
Okay, so I'm Justmatt.
"Yes. What's your name?"
My name is Justmatt.
"No. It's not."
Oh, so my name is Not.

It's really fun to see the gears whirring in his head as he tries to figure out how to deal with Who's on First thinking. I also realize I'm setting myself up for just the exact same behavior a few months or years from now, but I also think I would be in for it anyway given Joy's and my humor. Besides, I'm just thrilled to be having a conversation with the lad and this is one of the longest and most sensical we've managed.

Disney Commentary: A British Bank

2011-01-31T09:07:00.000-05:00

One of the joys of having a little one is getting to know your Disney movies even better than you ever thought you knew them ... because now you can commit literary analysis on them or try to force your way in with logic. This is less magical, but restores sanity.

In Mary Poppins, Mr. Banks sings a short song/talk as is his wont expressing his dissatisfaction with Poppins' outings. Titled "A British Bank" it is one of Hyrum's favorites from the movie. In the midst of Banks' comparison of a household to a bank, Poppins sidetracks him into believing what he wants is for the children to accompany him to work the following day. It's a very clever piece. Poppins' lines are particularly clever, comparing bankers to "a thousand ciphers neatly in a row." Delicious.

Banks' chief complaint however is unusual. He recites the outings the children have gone on to this point, which I can do from memory by this point:

"In short I am disturbed to hear my children talk about having tea parties on the ceiling. I ask you -- having tea parties on the ceiling! Consorting with race horse persons and questionable outings of every other kind.
*sung*
If they must go on outings, these outings ought to be
Fraught with purpose, yes!, and practicality.
These silly words like ... [Supercalafragilisticexpialadocious?]
*aside* Yes, well done. You said it.
*sung* And popping through pictures
Have little use! Fulfill no basic need! ..."

Think about that complaint. He is not worried that they are living in a fantasy world and out of touch with reality. He is not worried that they are lying to him. He is not worried that they are on drugs. He is worried that having tea parties on the ceiling is not useful.

That the Banks character is one with his priorities messed up to the n-th degree few will question, but it strikes me that he is surrendering a great deal of rationality and logic. He accepts that these things actually happened. Compare this to the Poppins character in the original books who practically yells at the children when they remind her of the things they saw and did. 'No, that most certainly never happened,' she avers. 'How dare you speak such nonsense!'

On the other hand, this really says that there is some hope for this Banks fellow. If he can accept tea parties on the ceiling and riding merry-go-round horses on a race track as possible if not useful, he may yet come round.... round the bend into insanity, that is. Whither he goes.

Thoughts from "Understanding the Book of Mormon"

2011-01-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

I reviewed Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon last week and today wanted to write up some of my notes from it. You may recall I argued that the book is less about understanding the Book of Mormon and more about a literary analysis of the narrators of the Book. So let's open with a quotation he pulls out about what literary analysis is:

"[Literary interpretation] is not a matter of discovering truths about a world so much as assigning thematic significance to component parts of a work. It is a search for coherence and sense. It involves making connections by subsuming more and more elements in a work under a network of thematic elements.

To someone like Joy, the admission that he is reading scripture without trying for Truth but mere thematic significance is "pointless." But let us allow him to make his case that studying the narrators is interesting at least. He makes an interesting point starting out about one of the key differences between the Bible and the Book of Mormon in terms of tone and narration, which is why he wants to interest us in the narrators:

The narrators in the Hebrew Bible are anonymous, omniscient, reticent, and unobtrusive. They speak from no particular time or place, reporting words, actions, and secret thoughts (even, at times, what God is thinking). They rarely comment on the story, offer judgments, mention themselves, refer to their own editing, or address their audience directly. We are seldom told how we should react to specific incidents, and as a result, biblical narratives are generally open to multiple readings and interpretations. This is part of the literary appeal. ... [In the Book of Mormon] the first round of interpretation has been done for us... . In summary, we might say that while the Bible appears to be divine in its authorship and human in its textual transmission, the Book of Mormon seems to be just the opposite -- it claims to have been written by specific, historical individuals but was transmitted to modern readers through divine intervention.

Unlike in the Bible, the narrators in the Book of Mormon are known characters with purposes, agendas, and limitations. I'll put some of his thoughts about those narrators below the fold if you want to keep reading:
Without going into detail about his characterizations of Nephi, which I already mentioned jarred Joy and me, some of Hardy's comments on the story of the brass plates in Chapters 3-5 of First Nephi are worth repeating:

Before that fateful night some family members could have held out the hope that their flight was a temporary matter ... [but now] there is no going back. ...

My own characterization of Laman and Lemuel is that they really want to have it both ways. They follow the prophet, but only half-heartedly. They want the summer cottage in Babylon. They are willing to serve, if it's convenient. They think of themselves as being righteous but aren't willing to really find out for themselves if it is true or commit themselves to live that way. God will not allow any of us be fence sitters. Trying to have it both ways builds up a tension inside a person that has to be resolved one way or the other, and they gradually and progressively choose to reject the prophets. Cutting off their opportunity to leave daddy and return to Jerusalem is key in that. One part of Hardy's discussion of 1st Nephi 5 is quite good:

Nephi has portrayed his mother as a dynamic, changing character; with each repetition there is also development. Sariah moves from doubt to acceptance [and] to see the Lord's hand in their family's history. ... Faith was a crucial issue for Nephi, and it appears throughout his writings. How do people come to accept the words of prophets as the word of the Lord? ... Sariah provides one particular answer. Her husband predicts a number of things; when one of those turns out to be true ... she is inclined to trust Lehi on the rest. ... Sariah's grasp of those principles is meant to be a model for readers.

One of my favorite quotes for a long time has been "All that I have seen [leads me to] trust God for all that I have not seen."

He also notes that Lehi apparently never gives up on Laman and Lemuel, encouraging them to repent and reminding them of God's mercy even on his deathbed after they have plotted his demise several times. Nephi speaks a lot more about justice, having seen their eventual downfall in a vision and feeling a sense of fatality (if not futility) about the whole affair. Even in recounting the same vision of the Tree of Life, Lehi focuses on the river protecting the righteous while Nephi says it is a punishment on the wicked.

This leads to his most poetic conclusion, that it is odd when Nephi sees the vision of the Tree of Life, he does not ask to taste the fruit, but rather to understand it: "The Spirit leaves, an angel takes over, and in the end Nephi is wiser but not happier. For the rest of his life, and through the entirety of his literary labors, Nephi works through the implications of that choice." As Milton put it in Paradise Lost, "better had I Lived ignorant of future, so had borne My part of evil only, each day's lot Enough to bear..."

Hardy has a lot to say about Nephi's adaptations of scripture, how his incorporations of scriptural phrases both supports them and puts them in a new prophetic context. Nephi doesn't just liken scriptures when he tells us he is doing it, but his reworkings of Isaiah put his own life and efforts into perspective and help him bear with his trials.

Hardy's discussion of Mormon is much more laudatory, praising Mormon for juggling three duties as fastidious historian, artistic author, and as prophet and moral guide. Among his more interesting comments, he notes that "Mormon himself is not a member of the lineage he chronicles" and that "Mormon never speaks of war figuratively or makes it a metaphor for Christian living." His assumption/conclusion is that Mormon believes that an accurate retelling of history will itself be convincing to people that the remainder of the prophets' prophecies will come true - just like the Sariah narrative.

In discussing how Mormon uses embedded narratives, he talks about Zeniff, who is not only the only person to give the Lamanites' point of view, but who does so at the climax of his piece of writing, giving it a lot of emphasis. He talks about Zeniff's great long-suffering and willingness to see the good in everyone, explaining some of his overzealousness and letting Noah become king after him.

There are a lot of phrases and stories that keep coming back. Two stories of missionaries, two stories of battle commanders, two stories of prophets being rejected and people being burned, and on and on. Mormon is trying to help us learn about each event from the other one: how are they the same, how different, and what do these reoccurrences mean? Hardy talks about Abinadi as a type of Moses before Pharaoh and of Alma and Amulek following Abinadi but oddly enough NOT following Moses' experience. -- Our work is not finished, therefore they kill us not, etc. Nephi and Lehi then follow Alma and Amulek, even to the point of being in the same jail, but where the guards of A&A are killed, the guards of N&L are converted. Some of the parallels, he argues, show that both competence (e.g. Limhi's people make the guards drunk and escape) and humility (Alma's people just pray and are delivered miraculously) are pleasing and approved of by God, but one set brings about more miraculous and clearly divine results. He also compares Alma's preaching with Mosiah's sons' and Capt'n Moroni's warring with Helaman's.

His vision of Moroni was the most novel without being jarring. His vision of Mormon is of someone who believes that historical evidence and recounting God's dealings with His people will convince people to change. His vision of Moroni, however, sees our day, sees people rejecting the entire book as fiction instead of history, and so relies heavily on the converting power of the Holy Spirit to communicate the truth. So he stumbles over his weakness in writing (until Ether 12, after which he doesn't mention it again) and calls on God to change our hearts again and again.

In the Book of Ether (where he makes some really unfounded generalizations), he does have one very interesting parallel: the story of the brother of Jared as a reversal of the fall, retracing the scriptural account backwards from the Tower to the Gareden: the family leaves the Tower, gathers animals and seeds like Noah, is chastened for wickedness like the people before Noah, then driven forth into the wilderness as Adam and Eve were from the Garden, God touches the sixteen stones (parallel to the fruit), and he returns to the presence of God.

The one time I felt the Spirit while reading Hardy was as he discussed Moroni's three attempts to conclude the Nephite record. Mormon 8-9 are chock full of unique references that hearken back to 2nd Nephi 3, the end of 2nd Nephi, and Mormon's last writings. By constructing his first conclusion this way, he is "linking the first and last generations of the Nephite history into an integrated whole. ... And then, in the last several verses of Mormon 9, he slips from the first-person singular into the plural, speaking not only for himself but also explicitly for his father and all those "who have written before him". Is it as if he were saying, From Nephi to Mormon to me. And it ends here." In his third conclusion in Moroni 10, he takes this borrowing further by using unique phrases from most of the Book's authors, including Amaleki, Lehi, Enos, and Jacob ... all of them from their own farewell statements. And then, when Moroni appears to Joseph Smith, what does he do? He is "still avidly quoting (and adapting) scripture."

Hardy also points out that the rawness of Mormon 9 is shocking for two reasons: this is what Mormon sounds like when he isn't being an editor for one thing, but more than that "the contrast between living with or without God could not be made more strongly."

On phrases that are repeated in interesting ways
"keep God's statues and commandments" appears 24 times in the Old Testament and 8 in the Book of Mormon accompanied by "according to the law of Moses", but never after Christ's visitation because the law of Moses had been done away.
"stand as witnesses" is only used in Mosiah 18 (the baptismal covenant) and Mos 24:13-14 as they escape.
"fair sons and daughters" is used by Mormon talking about the genocide and by Jesus talking about the calamity.
Parallel language is also used in Alma 27:12 and Mos 24:23 as two people escape their enemies.
The only time Mormon says "verily, verily" is to tell us that Captain Moroni was a really, really good guy.
Ether 12:27 -- Hebrews 11:32-34 -- 2nd Nephi 33:4

You may notice in these notes and my comments, Hardy's book is not about understanding the messages of the Book of Mormon. There is very little talk about the Atonement or Christianity itself, how Nephite Christianity is different, how the Book of Mormon expounds on and complements the Bible's message of salvation, what the mission of Jesus Christ is or any of the fundamental points the prophets set out to make. It is more concerned with how than what, and the why leaves much to be desired. Of course, given how didactic the Book of Mormon is (one of his favorite words), he may feel it unnecessary: you can't read the Book of Mormon seriously without coming away with its testimony of Jesus Christ and he wants to present something new This is an intellectual exercise. I like such exercises. The thing is, if this were all anyone read, they would not come away understanding the Book of Mormon.

What Disney would be doing today

2011-01-25T09:58:00.002-05:00

The sequel to "Donald Duck in Mathamagicland"

A Happy Mommy Post

2011-01-23T20:31:00.000-05:00

Sometimes Hyrum's just too much cuteness. I been kinda sick this week and trying to stay down. Friday morning we had decided that I was going to stay down all morning so Derrill was going to take care of Hyrum and get him off to school then come back and take care of himself. I would take care of Hyrum the rest of the day - Friday's he has a short school day.


Hyrum pretending to sleep on our bed over Christmas

It had snowed quite a bit that night and Hyrum had come to say hi to me. Derrill went outside to take care of the car and shovel snow. Then Hyrum climbed up on the couch with me - I was laying down. He said, "I want to sleep with you, Mommy."

He was supposed to be putting on his pajamas...

And he got under the covers and he closed his little eyes and snuggled up by me and didn't even try to make me wake up. And he'd open his eyes and smile and snuggle in and say "Sleep with Mommy." It was so adorable! We just sat there like that for a good 15 minutes, just both content. It was happy.

Then when he came home from school the first thing he wanted to talk to me about was how he remembered sleeping with Mommy "last night" and wanted to sleep with Mommy again. It was really sweet. He didn't want to talk about school, he just wanted to talk about spending time with me.

Hyrum is not a cuddler by nature, so those cuddling times are about as sweet as you get.

Interview with a toddler: The Cheese Game

2011-01-23T17:04:00.001-05:00

Following is an experiment at letting Hyrum blog. Hyrum chose some pictures, captioned them, and then we had the following conversation. Continue at peril of your logic. FYI - our camera is currently busted, so no new pictures for a while. :(

What do you want to talk about, Hyrum?

"I want to calm down so I won't get this. ... You're typing! Ooh, wow."

I'm typing what you are saying, Hyrum.

J: We could talk about school or we could talk about a game or a toy.

I like to play in the balls. I want to get off your lap.

"Game!"

What game?

"I like to do 2."

J: Two games?

"Cause you can shake one and then do one. Mouse game and then cheese game. Cause it's 2, then 3. A 3. 3. 3 read a book and then you're all done."

J: How do you play the cheese and mouse game, Hyrum?

"avadbrvjk;asedbnvjk;awbgevfhawek;bv;akjdvh089we4jkl;vbashidgv7890awhe;kvjb asdlvhgaw8o07eg;kvabjs dvjhbaedygvpuiawbegvhkaw bevyigawpduibv;akwjefv"

I missed all of that. Can you say that again, Hyrum, slower?

"Um, says you can play a game, so I said 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8."

I want to leave the pictures and then come back right here. See?

J: Am I a cheese or a mouse?

"You're king. ... You're a cheese. You're a king right now, Mommy. You're cheese."

J: So you're a mouse. Are you looking for cheese? ... How do you win the game?

"By getting all the cheese."

J: Where do you find the cheese?

"In the black thing. Cause it was 5 look. Looky look. You put out and then come out and you eat your cheese. It goes to the cheese game. Go. Go!

J: I don't know how to play it, but he's talked to me about it before. One of his teachers says he does really well at it. I had talked to somebody at the classroom, and she thought they play Farmer in the Dell, but it sounded more organized to me....

In the car, he's tried explaining to other people also, but we still can't figure it out. ... I think we'll have to try this again sometime when there's something he wants to talk about, like Mario, or in the morning instead of before dinner.... But it does give you a clear idea of one of the ways it's like having a conversation with Hyrum.

J: I have to applaud your typing. That was fast.

Who are You Today?

2011-01-23T15:25:00.000-05:00

Hi there. Hy here.

This month I've been discovering the wonderful world of Make Believe. In Make Believe Land I can be anyone I want, and Mommy and Daddy will always play along with me. It's enormously fun. Daddy's mentioned some of the fun I've had being Pinnochio, Mario, and Bob the Builder.

This week I took it to a whole new level: I've been someone else every day!

Tuesday I was Gerald the Elephant. I went to bed climbing into my elephant skin. This one is my favorite and Daddy likes this one. Mommy is Piggie.
Wednesday night I announced I was Johnny Appleseed and climbed into my tree.
Thursday night I told Mom I was Bartholomew Cubbins as she let me climb into my castle. She is the king. I have a hard time remembering Bartholomew's name, so I ask Mom and Dad "What's the word?" and they know I mean Bartholomew. It took them a while to pick up on my hint.
Friday night I was Bob the Builder again. (Bob climbs into Rolly.)
Saturday night and right now I'm Pinnochio again. (Pinnochio is swallowed by Monstro, but Daddy promises to come back in the morning and help me light a fire so the whale will sneeze me out again.)

The links are just so you know what I'm talking about if you need a hint. I don't get sales commissions or anything. Not that I think I've ever committed a sale. Are there sales of omission?

Book Review: Understanding the Book of Mormon

2011-01-23T14:49:00.001-05:00

For Christmas I got Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide. It came recommended by Bushman, a name I respect even if I haven't read his work yet, and looked like a different kind of scriptural study than I had done before. Hardy was the chief editor of the Reader's Edition of the Book of Mormon published a few years ago, so he is intimately familiar with it and its structure in ways few others are.

I like it overall and there are several parts of it that I'm going to take particular note of and jot in my own scriptures; but it also has some pretty large flaws (to my way of thinking) that prevent me from universally recommending it. In this post I'm going to talk about the book itself and in another I'll stick to specific things he talks about that I want to comment on or remember.

Hardy has set himself a difficult task, addressing both people who believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and those who believe Joseph Smith is a devilish deceiver. It would be much easier in some respects if he addressed only one or the other, but it also provides him some freedoms. Saying from the outset that he is not out to demonstrate the truthfulness of the Book gives him certain latitudes with both audiences that he would not have if he were only addressing one. It adjusts expectations, so that LDS readers aren't put off by a lack of testimony thumping for instance. Or at least, I'm not put off.

His goal is to convince both LDS and skeptics that the Book of Mormon deserves more serious, concerted thought than he believes we/they have given it. The prophets have said little different.

Hardy is a literary analyst. That's his job. It's what he does. To me, the book is less about understanding the Book of Mormon -- which I interpret as understanding what the Book of Mormon is trying convey -- as it is a literary analysis of the Book's three major narrators (Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni). That's not a bad thing, but it is an acquired taste and a specific purpose. If you don't go looking for literary analysis you will likely be disappointed in not finding whatever else you were looking for.

He asks over and over what we can learn about the narrators from what they chose to include in their records, what glaring omissions there are, and how they incorporated their selections. This makes for intellectually interesting reading, though I object when he says several times that it is the analysis of the narrators that makes the Book "interesting."

Particularly this second part opens wide the doors to unfounded speculation and this is where I find most of my difficulties. Like many religious authors, he starts out well by saying phrases like it is possible that... or one story that is consistent with the evidence is...; then he inevitably ends up with phrases like certainly, surely, and it is obvious that... when there is nothing certain, sure, or obvious about it. My wife found his characterizations of Nephi "unfaithful." I came away feeling more that he was trying to be deliberately provocative in an attempt to make both audiences take this kind of analysis more seriously: Okay, so you don't like my interpretation: what's yours? Despite that, there were some interesting and poetic thoughts I liked and some I will ponder on more.

His discussion of Mormon is much more laudatory, praising Mormon for executing a very difficult set of goals and balancing his roles as historian, prophet, and author well. Because of Hardy's long association with the structure of the Book, he is able to bring to our attention unique parallels between sections, demonstrating that when Mormon or Moroni borrow phrasing from other parts of the book, it is deliberate because those particular phrases are used nowhere else. Hardy is careful to quote the Book at length, highlighting key phrases and words, and he does an outstanding job of providing context for all quotes. Indeed, the context is the message for him.

I recommend his book for people interested in treating the Book of Mormon like literature. He does his job and he does it well. Just don't go looking for something that isn't there.

Hyrum moving on part 4: The Compromise

2011-01-19T21:01:00.004-05:00

The next two morning weren't any better. In fact, they got a bit worse. Tuesday he got worried about school while we were in the car. Wednesday he started crying before we got out the door.

This was not going well. He was still happy enough at school and cried when Mommy tried to bring him home again, but we could see the pattern developing.

So Wednesday morning as he began to have a fit, I stood apart and prayed to know what we could do for him. For a moment I saw my son more clearly. He wants to be happy. He needs to be happy. He needs everyone to be happy. I need to give him an excuse to be happy. Make him a deal. He wants you to help him be happy.

I stepped back into his view and asked Hyrum an important question. "Would you like Mario to come with you to school?"

He stopped crying. I had his full attention. Mommy had been quite firm that toys were not going with him to school. I wasn't sure at that moment how much I'd need to bargain with both of them or if I could pull something off with her approval, but I felt like I was on the right track.

"Would you like Mario to come with you to school?" I asked again.
Yes, he said.
"Hyrum, if we let Mario come with you in the car, will you be happy to go to school?"
There was a long pause as he thought about that one. "Yes."
"Okay. Mario will come with us in the car" - I was dropping him off Wednesday because I had a doctor's appointment right after. "and he will drop you off at school, but only if you are happy about going to school."

Joy approved, reminded Hyrum [and me] that Mario was not to go in the school, and the three of us - Hyrum, Mario, and me - set off. He thought about being sad at one point in the car. I reminded him of the deal and he plastered on a smile for me. We got to the school and he started getting ready to cry again. I told him that if he cried, Mario would not come and pick him up. If he stayed happy, Mario would come and pick him up after school. [Don't mess with me, man. I'm an economist. I understand incentives.]

That was enough. We walked up to the school together and marched to the classroom. He was clearly nervous and ill at ease, but he put on a brave face. We went to hang up his coat in the closet where I gave him the blessing.

"Sit in your lap," he asked.
What do you want, Hyrum?
"I want to sit in your lap and talk."
So I sat down and asked him what he wanted to talk about.
There wasn't any definite reply to that, so I just held him for a moment.

I asked if he wanted me to sing a song. Oh yes. Which one? Tarantara.
A very good pick, I thought.
"When the foeman bears his steel/ We uncomfortable feel./ And we find the wisest thing/ is to slap our chests and sing/ Tarantara!"

I sang his little courage song to him, sitting there in the coat closet on his third day of school. We got to a dancing part and I stood up, took his hands, and we danced around in a circle in the coat closet. Then we got to the finale "We go! We go! Yes, forward on the foe! Yes, forward on the foe!" at which point the Major General interrupts and everyone stops moving. [The video shows Hyrum's reenactment back in March.]
.

Well, I started marching him out of the closet on "We go! We go!" and paused just at the entry way to the rest of the classroom. All the kids' eyes were on the two of us and I realized what a very silly Daddy I was. But now was not the time to think about that. "We go! We go!" I sang and we moved forward bravely into the room.

We found a toy, sat at a chair, sang a few more choruses... and then I stood up again. "We go! We go!" I sang my way out to the door. I turned at the final pause, waved to him and blew him a kiss. He looked so ... indescribable sitting there. Forlorn, resigned, brave, afraid, loved, ... I turned and marched out, singing to the end.

I got to the car and sat weeping, a horrible mix of emotions as jumbled as my son's. Of them all, the strongest emotion was gratitude for Gilbert and Sullivan, for the power of music in my son's and my life, its ability to comfort and strengthen and bond. Hyrum trusted me and I was able to help him through our mutual musical obsessions. Just feeling that bond and gratitude was overwhelming. I thought about the things I really don't want to do but that Heavenly Father knows I need to and how He helps me to see them through...

Thursday morning early Joy and Hyrum dropped me off at the airport. I flew to Denver for my job market conference. There were several moments where I was afraid and would have done anything to stall the appointed hours of judgment. I found a bathroom, prayed, ... and sang [very, very quietly]. "Yes, forward on the foe! Yes, forward on the foe! ... We go! We go!" And it was actually pleasant. Thank you, Hyrum. Thank You, Father

Hyrum moving on part 3: First day of school

2011-01-17T22:27:00.001-05:00

Joy and I accompanied little Hyrum to his first day of school January 3. He was excited to go to school.

We drove there listening to his favorite music. He was excited to go to school.

We parked at the school. He was excited.

We got out and put his backpack with his breakfast and lunch in it on him for the first time. He nearly fell over. It was a struggle for him to walk up to the school building even with our support. The backpack eventually fell off his back and I hooked it onto his arm which I held up for him.

He was not in a good mood when we got to his classroom at the end of the hall. It suddenly became very real that we were about to leave him in this strange environment and he did NOT want us to go!

For the firstest time in his live long life, Hyrum felt separation anxiety. We were delighted?? No, not really, but that was our silver lining. After 34 months, he's finally decided it's important that we stick around.

We spoke softly to him and tried to encourage him to play with some of the toys he had liked. He wasn't letting us out of a 2' radius from him. Joy had forgotten something in the car for him, though, so she left to go get it and I tried to transition him into this new world.

The teacher, who is a very nice lady and accustomed to this, suggested that many parents will try to ease their children into it by only staying through breakfast the first day, then a little longer and a little longer; or come and get them after lunch because there's a lot of noise and business in the morning but after lunch when nap time comes around it gets quiet and the children start missing their parents more... and none of this was helping me comfort him. She shared with Joy later that many children cry the entire first month their children come. Sometimes normal is more frightening than calming.

Hy and I ducked into the "closet" - a little area closed off from the rest of the room where coats are hung but without a door - and I sat down on the ground with him. He held me closely and just whimpered that he didn't want me to leave and he didn't want to stay. It was truly heart-rending.

I finally remembered that I had wanted to give him a father's blessing before school. Now seemed a good time. I asked if he wanted a blessing and hes said yes. So sitting there in the closet I put my hands on his head and blessed him with the ability to enjoy school, to grow, to make friends, to be comforted. He seemed to calm down just a little.

I talked to him about nursery - you like going to nursery right? Mommy and Daddy leave and you play and have fun, and then Mommy and Daddy come back to get you. This is just like nursery.

"You and Mommy will come back for me?"

Yes, Mommy will come for you.

"Mommy AND YOU come back for me?"

I weaseled my way out of answering that one and brought him back into the classroom. Mommy was back so I gave him one more hug and told him to give Mommy hugs. He ran to her and I stepped out of the room, not knowing how long it was going to take her. I was surprised to see her so soon, but those few minutes out in the hall were miserable because I didn't have to act brave and happy about this anymore. [The bowling picture from Joy's birthday is a metaphor.]

She joined me and we walked out the doors together, talking about how hard that was. Joy was going to go back in an hour or so to check on him.

When she did, very sneakily so that Hyrum wouldn't see her in case he had acclimatized, the teacher reassured her that Hyrum was happy and enjoying himself. When she came back again to bring him home, they reported that he had said he didn't want to come home. Now that's our Hyrum.

So the first day was a success.

Coming Home From Denver

2011-01-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday after my job market conference in Denver I took a very delayed flight to Detroit, raced to the next plane to Ithaca which I miraculously caught, and was soon waiting at the airport at midnight for Joy and Hy to come pick me up. It was a good conference. I was looking forward to being home.

Joy had reported that Hy was having a difficult time during the days I was gone - crabby, less patient, just a bit wild, "tantrumy all over the place." She figured he was missing me. She woke him up, got him in the car, saque and all, and drove to the airport.

When Hyrum saw me, it was a lot of fun to watch his face. His bleary eyes searched the area and lighted on me. They widened in shock and his mouth started twitching as it broke out into a brilliant, wide-mouthed smile. The happiness and excitement radiant beamed from his eager face. Oh what a happy boy!

I opened the car door to give him a hug. "Hi, Luigi!" he said. [This is what I was talking about in my other post.]

Ah, my boy. It's good to be home.

A Disturbance in the Force

2011-01-15T17:55:00.001-05:00

For weeks Joy and I have been Luigi and Peach. We don't even get called Daddy and Mommy anymore, just Luigi and Peach. Even in the middle of the night, he calls me Luigi.

Then Wednesday he discovered the Bob the Builder video he got for Christmas.

Suddenly I'm Scoop and Joy is Wendy. The great advantage of this is that Scoop can speak with my voice - Luigi is an accent and if I don't speak with a bad Italian accent (even to Joy!) he gets upset. Scoop is much easier. It also means he wants me to carry him a lot more places, since Bob rides his machines. "Bob" wears his hard hat most places and is distressed when it falls off.

Not that Mario has disappeared. Mario still is a necessary part of taking Hy to and from school, the must-have friend (with the giant Mickey) in his bed at night. But, still and all...

Bob is back.

Dragon Quest IX: Initial Party Composition

2011-01-11T09:52:00.000-05:00

Most of the walkthrough guides I've found suggest that your party in Dragon Quest 9 [Nintendo DS] is whatever you feel like. This gives the impression that all starting vocations/classes are balanced.

They're not.

Since you can change your vocation at will relatively early in the game, a poor choice at the beginning probably won't do you much harm ... but it's no help either. There are two jobs that I would recommend you avoid for your first companions: mage and thief. Reasons for that below the fold:

I'm shocked to even give such advice, but the mage is really under-powered. True, when you get a level 1 mage, she has a nice spell that does more damage than your fighters can with wimpy weapons. Any of the fighters quickly bound past that spell, however, and mages get new spells rarely. On top of that, when a new spell does come along, it's often not even a damage spell. So your mage will be stuck casting the same spell, doing the same damage while your other party members are upping their damage. They do get some spells that affect groups of monsters, but the vast majority of the time you're dealing with groups of 1-2 monsters that just aren't worth it. The wands that restore mage spell points don't give many spell points because the mage can't do much damage with them [ie - 1]. So the real limiting factor in how long my party could go between healing up at the inn was mage spell points.

Thieves are also disappointing because they can't pick locks. Their main attraction is the early-gained ability to try to rob monsters (skill "half-inch") to get more alchemic agents. But once you have built up a major class, you can take 9-11 levels of thief, get that skill, and go plundering to your heart's content (and with about 25% chance of success, even that isn't very spectacular). Thieves don't do a lot of damage, but the assassin's blade you pick up can be very nice with a surprisingly high chance of instantly killing anything other than a boss. Thieves also get a heal spell. (hunh?)

I suppose a mage-thief combo would be half-way decent: neither would do much damage, but when your mage runs out of spell points she could try to plunder.

Priests are very nice: they do shockingly well in damage, their heal spells go far and cost very little, and they have some helpful additional skills.

Martial artists are exceptionally strong, fast fighters. They do a lot of damage and they do it early in the round.

Warriors are less impressive than martial artists because they never pick up speed. They do damage, they take damage (better defense than M.A.'s), but they're just not fast.

That's why changing vocations early on is such a nice perk. You let your warrior spend 9-11 levels as a martial artist to pick up extra speed, your priest spend 9-11 levels as a warrior to get some extra strength, and so on.

You start as a minstrel which is the clear multi-class that does a little of everything, but isn't as good at anything as the original class. I've been pleased enough with it, but you really don't need more than one.

I am not receiving any compensation from Dragon Quest or Mario (my last couple posts) or any company affiliated with them.

A little something for Hyrum: Mario Theme Accordinated, Tromboned, and much more

2011-01-10T16:45:00.000-05:00

Accordion

Trombone Quartet

Big Band, sung, and mascotted

Bassooned

A little something for Hyrum: Mario Theme Orchestrated and A Capella

2011-01-10T14:54:00.004-05:00

Love, your Luigi

Miracle in Sierra Leone

2011-01-02T22:57:00.002-05:00

I was most fascinated to read the following account today about some of the first Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in Sierra Leone. The first converts in Freetown were baptized in 1988. By 1990 there were a number of LDS congregations with chapels, including several in Bo, second largest city in Sierra Leone. But then in January 1991, Ezra Taft Benson - then president of the church - sent a letter to the local leadership, Brother Touray,

in which he asked the Saints in Bo to abandon their meetinghouses and to gather again in their homes to worship. The young leaders were very discouraged, feeling that the buildings were such an important milestone for the Church in this part of Sierra Leone.
Uniformly, members were disappointed and unhappy about the request. Some members of the infant congregations were offended that the prophet in Utah would give such unwelcome advice. Others were heard to question whether or not the prophet understood their circumstances, and, lacking faith in the Lord's servants, they left the Church. Others felt the stirring of testimony and confirmation of the Spirit, and while they didn't understand why President Benson would ask such a thing, they knew him to be a prophet. They had also come to trust their mission president who they loved. President Touray spoke recently of those days with grateful appreciation. He was sad and discouraged, but "recognized that we had been given a formal commandment, and I had to obey. I realized it would be very important for us to obey although I did not know why at the time." The chapel doors were closed.
In March 1991, civil war erupted in Sierra Leone and this little nation became engulfed in a fiery battle that lasted more than a decade. Communities collapsed, infrastructures deteriorated, banks were shuttered, food was in scarce supply and repeated military coups left uncertainty as to who was a friend or foe. Churches were frequently targeted by the rebels with bullets and firebombs, and thousands of people lost their lives while sitting on pews hoping to pray and worship.
But the members of the Lord's Church were safe from this harm for they were home worshiping in obedience to a prophet's counsel.
President Touray spoke of the miracle that had come to the people because of their obedience. "No member of the Church died in Bo during the war — not one. The LDS Church was the only church that continued operating during the war in Bo — the only one. Every other church closed its doors. It was too dangerous for the people to walk to church and too dangerous to sit and worship. None of us (the Latter-day Saints) had any problem during the war. We worshipped through the whole war no matter how grave the situation was. Because we were obedient, our members received this great blessing."

Hyrum Moving On part 2: The Adventure Ahead

2011-01-02T20:26:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is a big day for our little guy.
"Therefore it's a big day for us," says Joy. [As always, Joy is in quote marks since Derrill does the typing.]

Tomorrow we all start school. Caroline Elementary preschool.
"And we are a little nervous."

This was not what we had planned three years ago. Hy was going to stay and be home-schooled by his mommy who has a degree in elementary education. It sounded so nice.

But that's not what Hy needs.
"Since he was 18 months, we've been pretty convinced that preschool would be in Hyrum's future."
He's a very bright kid, as you've no doubt heard us regale you often. He counted to 104 with me the other day. He reads half a dozen words at least. He doodles letters and today started practicing how to properly write them. One of his toys asked him to do an addition problem, and he solved it. He has even begun trying to imitate my theatrical dialects (since I started doing Mario and Luigi).
"He gets slightly unintelligible when he tries."

He doesn't need school for the academics. He needs the sociability. Caroline looks like it's going to be a great hit. We visited the school around the end of October and Hy fell in love. He was excited to be there and play with their toys. The kids were nice and friendly and welcoming. The teacher comes extremely highly recommended. When we left, he cried that he wanted to go back.

"We've taken him to the playground a few times at the school, and he's really enjoyed it."
"When I went in with him to pick up a packet of materials from the teacher, he just cried and cried because he watned to play with the toys in the classroom, and I said no you can do that later, but it was really hard to get him out of the classroom."

In preparing him for the big day, he has expressed only one concern: who would feed him? He'll have breakfast and lunch there - and if they can get him to eat anything, all power to them! He doesn't usually eat for babysitters, so it may take some getting used to.
He got a Spiderman backpack and Toy Story thermoses for Christmas, which he was excited to drink out of at once - even empty!
Actually, tonight we did get his first 'I dunno' moment. Mommy offered to play a three-in-a-row game with him on the computer after school [Thanks, Pop!]. He then said, "I don't want to go to school. I want to stay home and play with Mommy." I managed to convince him that working at school was a prerequisite to Mommy being willing to play.

Otherwise he is very happy to be going, excited, talking to people about it. We'll both be dropping him off tomorrow morning early, then going to feed some friends' chickens while they enjoy vacation; Joy will drop me off at school and return to check on him briefly.

"It's just feeling more real. Part of me doesn't know how to feel. I'm still kind of confused about whether I should want him to go or not. I feel like it's right, so he's going to go. I guess it would help if I wanted him to. I could just let myself feel happy about it and not sad... I want him to have all the good experiences there, but I want to avoid all the bad ones."

"I don't get to choose that."

"I couldn't do it if I didn't think it was the right thing to do. I still doubt myself sometimes. But Derrill tries to encourage me. He's a nice husband. I don't want anything more than to be a Good Mommy."

We've both cried at various points. "I used to cry every time I thought about it until we went and saw the Caroline school and had a really strong feeling that he would be loved there and it would be okay and saw how much he loved being there in the classroom. But I haven't cried like that - y'know, frequently - but I did cry when I got my father's blessing and when I read about tender mercies in Mosiah 28:7 today." Yeah, that scripture was perfect. "It was the first one I read today - just reading my scriptures like normal.

It would be really easy to sit back and count all the things that could be a problem for him. I try really hard not to.
"Good job."
Like... just kidding.
"Bad list."
We got pictures of the children in the class and had Hyrum review their pictures and names several times. "He doesn't know all their names yet, but I haven't pestered him about it every day, y'know." At least they won't be strangers. "I never did the matching game I wanted to."

"We haven't necessarily done everything we wanted to to help him transition. And preparation time is at an end and the time for going to school is here. Yay for school."

"We know our son is ready even if we're not. I'm still not ready, but I'm thankful he'll get the opportunity."
The opportunity to go to infinity.... and beyond! "With someone other than Buzz and Mario" who will not be accompanying him. He's already been warned of that. "He said that a few times today - 'Mario no go to school.' No, he will not."

"He grew up so much at Pop and Boo's." That he did, though that's another post. "I just have the feeling that he's going to come home from school some days and I'll say, 'Where did this kid come from?'" Given how much of his growth has been in bursts and spurts, that's a very real prediction.

Hyrum Moving On part 1: Thank You and Farewell

2011-01-02T19:32:00.000-05:00

Last week, Hyrum said, "What is repent?" and "What is the Holy Ghost?" Today he asked "What are you doing?"

Thank you.

Tonight, Hyrum took turns playing Tic-Tac-Toe with Mommy.

Mommy asked, "Will you be x's or o's?"

He said, "I will win with o's."

The Buzz coloring book and paints were an enormous hit.

Thank you.

Last week, Hyrum managed to keep the same pair of underwear unsoiled the entire day, and for the first time complained when his diaper was not clean. Tonight he jumped over and across the scriptures. He now regularly asks us to "Give me choices" for what he can eat.

Thank you.

Thank you all for loving our little boy, for pushing him, for spending so much time with him and us, and for the great blessing you have been in his life and ours. Thank you for your insights and examples. We will miss you.

Merry Christmas, Hyrum (1)

2011-01-01T14:18:00.000-05:00

'Sup.

Mario collects coins, and now I know why: chocolate!

Excalibur! I mean, Pinocchio! It's mine! All mine!

Reading Mother Goose with the grandparents.

This was the sight that greeted Hyrum/Mario/Buzz/Pinocchio/rubber ducky when he walked into the living room Christmas morning and his reaction.

Picking Favorites

2010-12-29T18:28:00.001-05:00

Hyrum announced that he wanted to listen to Hark the Herald Angels Sing during dinner tonight (because we had just watched it from the First Presidency Christmas Devotional). Well, he didn't have any Hark the Angels on his playlist, so we need to pick one.

There are only 6 versions on this computer right now. So for dinner we listened to Mannheim Steamroller, Anthony Way Choirboy's Christmas, Julie Andrews, two Mormon Tabernacle Choirs, and Bing Crosby. After each one I asked which one he liked best. His answer was invariably "Hark All Ye Nations."

Until we were all done. Then the vote was in: Bing Crosby wins. Sometimes simplicity wins out.

(And now he's singing Hark All Ye Nations again.)